April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Nicholas YB Wong is the author of Cities of Sameness (Desperanto, 2012). His poems are forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Gargoyle, J Journal: New Writing on Justice, The Journal, Mead, Nano Fiction, Platte Valley Review, The Portland Review, Quiddity and REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters. He reads poetry for Drunken Boat. Visit him at http://nicholasybwong.weebly.com.
Journey
“Monogamous. I’m interested in monogamous.”
— Anne Carson
She pulls the seat belt across her breasts to reach the buckle, a schist in femininity. She looks away. Other cars are arranged in the parking lot neatly like urns. Soon, doors will open, hand-breaks released, people busy getting in and out. She envies those clean and metallic bodies, where a scratch can be covered up by paint. In a car’s life, scars never last long. He turns on the air conditioning, her hands fold on her laps to stop the chill entering her from below the dress. Their car moves, they don’t – first to the bakery, then her office and his. The tires, monogamous to this route, deserve a merit certificate. But when they are about to join the traffic outside, she looks into the rear mirror and finds herself, years younger, in the back seat, where they first made out, where they both thought such desire could last for however long they wanted, where they found nothing in life was monotonous.
Paranormal Panorama
Galicians are proud of their potatoes and watercress; mangosteens and mangoes bear heritage only linguistically. A sheen of shame blows in when the Thai family arrives at the infinity pool with in-room bathrobes and noise. The father nears the sundeck chair whose whole existence is to serve sweaty human bodies. His white sideburns say he is a guru who bareback-rides elephants to his sumptuous poppy fields. His six-year-old bomb-dives, causing ripples that make the water’s face look aged. The mother and daughter are acting maternal at the far end, splashing water onto each other like giant frogs in swamps, ready to lay eggs that look like sago in coconut tapioca. A deserted swing in Argentina sways by itself for ten days, a new tourist attraction. A shark with a snake’s body and toothed gills is found in Japanese waters after earthquakes. More absurd is me closing a book, looking at how they merge joy with travelling. A swimming pool cliché: the father counts from three, his children kicks with skills learned and not learned, departing from the edge of infinity toward me. The clouds are doing their job by hiding the sun, blurbs on the book jacket greased and glazed by tanning oil. This is what the website promised: our resort staff clears floating leaves eight times a day with an extended net, even no one swims there with laughter.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal (Washington, DC: Red Morning Press, 2006). A recipient of writing residencies from MacDowell Colony (USA), Hawthornden Castle (UK), and Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), her work is published in journals and anthologies in many countries and online, with individual poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. www.ivyalvarez.com.
The secret sister
She appeared in the meadow, two hours after dawn, nightgown fluttering in her wake as the sun gilded the hills, the mist rose pale blue, a scentless smoke. Where she stood, she was a column of white and she herself pale, lips bluing, too, hair a black waterfall. Turning to look at her, the cold grabbed at the skin of my belly, my calves. In a minute, she was younger by a year. You could see it, like taking a watch pin between finger and thumb, and winding it backwards. Shrinking into her clothes, hair rising, skin tightening, smoothing, plumping up, chest-height, waist-height, knee-height, the reeds teasing me with glimpses of her. Then she was a Moses in her swaddling clothes, then the smallest embryo, then a stain. She did not have a name.
The Museum of Inexplicable History
For six months I arranged museum dioramas; in placards explained the scenes; led bewildered tourists through small rooms. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings, ebony mocha okay choking down coffees, teas, distant gazes. Now I am safe in the deep V of a weekday, cradled like a silkworm, suspended, watching the scene below. The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair, green trousers and purple velour sleeves. Queered courtiers, courtesans, slippered feet denting stone steps. When Alice steals away and consoles the Duchess’s baby, it metamorphoses into a pig and runs away from her, runs away. As I would, if I could remember. I do remember. That I, just ten, became the mystery of course, reverse, twitch, emerge. In the distance, a chiming swish of chintz, of pastel polyester: the Avon Lady treks door to door. Pinkness announces itself, calm and self-important. People are sharks, while all the wild protected liminal woods hoist their nets, weighing the harvest. Rough chaff husks falling, blowing away. Something offensive: a revolver is cooked into a codex. I read it closely. It’s January: time to go.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Misbah Khokhar was born in Karachi-Pakistan, with both European and Indian ancestry. She currently lives in Melbourne. She holds a Masters in Philosophy in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. Her work appears in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Contemporary Asian Australian Poets and Peril. She has been featured on ABC Radio’s Poetica, and has performed at the Queensland Poetry Festival. She was highly commended by Thomas Shapcott, Brownyn Lea and John Kinsella, and mentioned as a ‘standout’ in Lea’s essay ‘Australian Poetry Now’ (Poetry Magazine, May 2016, Ed. Robert Adamson). Her debut collection Rooftops in Karachi is published with Vagabond deciBels3.
Rooftops in Karachi
My cousin has named all of his homing pigeons. He takes them in his soft hands and feeds them, but I have a feeling he could just as easily use those hands to snap their thin necks. My other cousin, who lives in the same house, goes around shooting cats. Since I arrived I have been putting out bowls of milk each night. Another cousin has an imaginary lover who she has introduced me to. She makes him out to be so real that I believe he is. But I can never seem to see him, which is not due to him being imaginary, but because he is shy and agile. She describes the way he kisses her, and the conversations they have, and to this day I remember his name. I know it’s been said that falconers feel their hearts soar with their falcons, but I don’t think it’s just a feeling.
I’m Going to Give You a Photograph
And when I take the photograph you will be saved. From what I don’t know. I’ve given you a photograph where you can store your grief: let it leave your face, ignite and fade. I’ve given you a photograph, your spectral resin will have no copies. It will be your canoptic surface, a scale of the immensity of your beauty. The flash will burn away your fate, will make you momentarily famous. I will give you a photograph that will be your golden fleece, a replica that answers you in time with a little betrayal.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Adam Aitken’s fourth major book is Eighth Habitation. In 2010 he was Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Hawai’i Manoa. His work has appeared in The Australian’s Review of Books, Southerly, Heat, Poetry (Chicago), Jacket, Cha, and Drunken Boat. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Imperial Days
‘ a sort of
irksome Larkin-land’
– Pam Brown
My father’s imperial days, he remembers those, the better hours. To be born British. How coloured/ful was that? Spring 1961, a run on galoshes. Naipaul’s grumpy prose: and there is only one course: flight. Flight to the greater disorder, the final emptiness. Wot, Balham? Let us say that he’s forgotten the episode with the sleeping pills. I am glad my mother was no Sylvia Plath. He forgot the presents and gifts not reciprocated (a pair of black French knickers). He can’t recall the affairs and counter affairs, the improbable survival of beauty, art, the house which leaked and the stink of my sour nappies. The boredom of housebound employment and unemployment. My mother reminds me. The well-wishers arriving, drenched at the door during a bus strike. Her favourite story: an Australian novelist who couldn’t light the boiler in a miners strike. Stuffed it with too much newspaper she said. I’ve read about the white-out of 1963, the killer fog of ’64. My father’s letters and nightmares of the dead and the imminence of mutually assured destruction. The scarce tropical flowers and fresh fruit. The deadliness of the chill and the butcher’s queue for the last pot roast. I remember the sawdust on the floor. She remembers the drunken au pair with the French lover. Or was it the French au pair with the drunk lover? The cardigan poets who ate her out of house and home. The unending party. My father dreamt of a pottery in Wales. My mother refused. The boredom of 65, the plaster-eating mould. The summer of love, they missed it.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Brendan Ryan has had three collections of poetry published, the most recent being A Tight Circle, Whitmore Press, in 2008. His next collection of poetry, Travelling Through the Family, will be published by Hunter Publishers in 2012.
The killing work
The Hereford steer from wild country that charged our Valiant as we tried to shift it into a fresh paddock. Herd leader, cantankerous, fearless; a beast we couldn’t trust. Dents in the quarter panels, tongue swipes on the bumper. Pushed deeper into the paddock, we reverse away from the lowered horns, my father swearing, wrenching the steering wheel left, right, wheels skidding over cape weed. My brother and I in the back seat look away from what we know is not quite right. Not a time to speak with a beast on the loose, tearing through a barbed wire fence, flipping over, an apparent heart attack. We stare at the frothing mouth. My father silenced. The Hereford steer from wild country left on the track for the knackery truck.
scrubbed concrete floors
latex gloves, Muslim slaughtermen
rows of carcasses slide towards you
Returning from away, I ask about our pet cow Beefy – a cross-bred black dairy cow. The only cow we could hug, nuzzle, who would amble up to us, raise her head to sniff, rub against us. Not a productive milker, the type of cow who recognizes her own presence, unafraid of dogs, almost personable. You’re eating her, came the reply. Cut down, packed into plastic bags, steaks and ribs piled high in the Deep Freeze. A family has to eat. We ate steaks for breakfast, dinner and tea yet rarely butchered our own. Deaths in the paddock were acceptable, regrettable, something to rise from while talking around the red laminex table, those heifers that need to be ear-tagged.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jen Crawford is a New Zealander living in Singapore. Her poetry collections include Bad Appendix (Titus Books), Napoleon Swings (Soapbox Press) and most recently, Pop Riveter, a set of factory poems available in limited edition from Pania Press. She teaches creative writing at Nanyang Technological University.
clear days giant sacra
this is for. it is not about or to, but I wish it was with. or it is with, about, for, to. it will be with. it will be with. it is not it is with.
with a walking, a donkey alongside. the gravel releases dust and the dust takes up the sun, dumping it across the valley. it is now 22 degrees and 6pm. the decline is fitted with small mauve wildflowers. we can look at them fined in the light and dark, narrow for pleasure. with that I have an excellent headache, from the tightening of the sun’s plates against the hills. while the dog and the donkey chase each other through the discards we stand here cantering our trebuchets, in arms. there’s nowhere to set the baby down. when I had this pain before I didn’t consider my hip considering a weight. when I saw the gravel I didn’t know you would be with me, to hold and cantering.
it will be. a strong lower back and rain or light as circular breathing. it will be with me your cream-covered book. a mouth full of simple exercises in shaded awnings. let no more than a lungful. need it be one after another, in and out, left and right? only without clarinets, and so far these continue, in will be with me. I am still walking. at times it has been said that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that even dictating physicians frequently have difficulty with plurals and that this pushes the burden straight back on the transcriptionist. but this is a curfew from when. in will be with me it will be with me, this alongside and with pains. this in between fingers and around fingers, the gravel light. this donkey I am conscious, and child.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Julie Chevalier’s short-story collection, Permission to Lie, was published by Spineless Wonders in 2011. Two poetry collections are forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann: linen tough as history, and Darger: his girls.
haunted girl lines my pocket with headlines
girl sends me off forever but to sing novena sends me girl sends me off forever girl
sends me to hospital girl reveals the clinic girl sends me spelling didn’t send the
question girls sends off clouds from the window sends me off forever the ward where I
was washing a girl but washing the floor wanted girl sends me a blossom on a lunch
tray girl sends dead bouquet in the rubbish a pissing patient girl gave newspapers send
me off girls forever sang about girl forever off girls but moving girls send girls away
forever snow didn’t girl didn’t sends me axe to shave stopped broke the food trolley
coming girl sends me off
& dribbled catsup on his clean shirt april 12, 1972
as soon as mr darger left for mass yeah, four times a day i sneaked into his room & grabbed the clothes off
his chair really hot water & extra scoops of lux out of the bendix & pegged to the line david suggested the
goofy old coot take a bath no siree we brazillians don’t like to bathe in winter april 12, hardly of course
he’s not brazillian i ironed the clothes dry while he was in the tub the old man grimaced when we yelled
surprise happy birthday just us lodgers & the landlords in the yard he bent down to pick up a rusty bottle
cap & could hardly stand up again leaned on a chair & stared at the clouds he fed hot dog sandwiches to the
landlord’s dog the only thing he said was the good lord always claps thunder on my birthday i wouldn’t say
grateful for the angel cake, no three pieces my seven minute icing the new tube pan didn’t stick the dog
followed him halfway up the stairs to his room
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Bella Li is a Melbourne poet and editor. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Meanjin, Cordite and Otoliths.
Voyage
Sullen days. The corsair moves mechanically on its hinges. Beneath our proscenium arch, wily ports ply their trade; measuring out the hours in skeletons and lampshades. The hold littered with props. Flat clouds drifting idly along the cardboard coast. (In the dawn they emerge, pale with grief.) I cannot remember biding time in the shallows with the air so steep. And the space behind the sun growing and growing, the stalls silent and empty on quiet nights. There were months when great shadows fell across the waves. And we moved, so it seemed, through lost oceans; past sunken islands from which the sounds of mourning stole. It is true that the flight was exhausting; my eyes reeked of distance. But when the blackness lifted, the horizon—beyond the dim circle of lights—remained featureless, unaltered. Now the shapes of our desires do not change but mimic, with each curtain fall, the appearance of a predictable set of stars. When evening transpires (at the appointed time, in the appointed place), the tide reverses; our loyal machines rise, assemble themselves across the deck. Wolf-like, sand-like. Waiting for that same, slow mirage: the familiar moon, hung from its lamprey sky. Swinging guilt.
E 44 10 N 33 15
In the year of the Hegira 622, driven from the city and exiled, I arrived at the mountains of the . The journey was arduous. But I was “armed with the terrors of the sword”. And the movement of the heavenly bodies (the western side of the city entirely round) filled the sky. The city was entirely round; the inhabitants remarkable for their treachery. Concerning the treacherous mountains. Concerning the origin of the name “ ” (in the palace, there was a small ). Here the young prince—concealing his deformity with a veil—saw in the heavens the terrible rising. And “the phantom drew back his veil”. Massacred, according to custom, the vast number of the inhabitants. There followed “a grievous famine”. (In the eastern sky I saw the sun.) One morning, according to the vast number of oriental historians, the sun “a little after rising, completely lost its light”. To the great astonishment of the astronomers, this darkness (in the eastern palace persisting). Persisted until noon.
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Michael Farrell has previously published prose poems in a raiders guide (Giramondo 2008). He coedited (with Jill Jones) Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann 2009). His latest publication is thempark (Book Thug 2010). Contact: limecha@hotmail.com.
Contretemps
Red wine is certifiably itchy trying to get Linda to splash Sally . When Sally walks in wearing Brad ’s shirt – the one with the heather on it . What isn ’ t a contretemps with those people ? It wasn ’ t my fault I buried the drugs , Sally said , wilting the lettuce with hot oil , Appalachian style . Glenda managed to join the tennis club , only to find that Tony had left , and had taken up croquet – or crochet – or Pinochet – or Pinocchio – or pinochle – or pineapple mastication for his health . Linda blamed everyone . Did you see Hal collapse at the piano , with one of those pussy willow rib – ticklers on ? How much irony did you put in that drink ? he gasped . I am going to get me a slice of Brad ’ s heather shirt — you see if I don ’ t ! A dog is here , with a message for the cows . . . ‘ Drop dead ’ , I think he said , and when Angelo turned up shirtless on his motorbike . . . People started doing a bit of algebra in their front mashed potato ( it was Halloween , after all ) . ( Teenagers panting under the eaves and all that . ) They’ve got Supertramp playing on the green this year ; I don ’ t know what respectable folkies see in ‘ \ ’ ‘ / ’ them myself . They ’ re no Yoko Onos are they ? Angelo turned the heat up by taking a hacksaw to the last baguette – as if there aren ’ t kids to foster in his own village – or whatever they have up in those rainbows he lives in . The bridge fell on Hal ’ s house last night , but no one believed him so his grandmother was stuck there half the night , with a girder holding her scalp in place : you could say . But how the bridge got there is anyone ’ s business .
April 15, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, The Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first book of poetry, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Writer at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii and lectured with poet Gary Snyder. He was a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and also the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic.
Song for the Joy Luck Club Waitress of Kowloon Tong
“Sihk faahn,” you giggled, serving shrimp dim sum with congee porridge. In the restaurant you read my fortune: “Yat geuk dap leung syun,” then scrawled name and email on a paper napkin.
You live off Festival Walk on the 60th floor with your parents. “Lang do pow kang,” boasted your mother. We sit on a bench beside the light rail track. Smog unfurls over the mountain like a bone-white flag as your shiny black hair rivers through me. \ Lips taste of peanuts from dragon beard candy. I summon the boy in me hidden for decades. “Ngoh oi nei,” I stammer. Your eyes say you don’t believe.
I search for our future as my train passes.
Notes:
sihk faahn: bon appetit
yat geuk dap leung syun: 1 foot on 2 boats (beware of cheating in a relationship)
lang do pow kang: so pretty the mirror breaks
ngoh oi neih: I love you
Sound Effects in Vista
Boom-ah-boom-ah-boom-boom. The walls and tables quiver. The F-18s are at it again, practice bombing the Whiskey and Zulu regions of neighboring Camp Pendleton. They carpet bomb while I’m stretched out on the carpet. Fluffy the cat folds her ears, scrambles for cover. They bomb through Letterman’s monologue—I pretend the jerk next door is banging his drums. The windows rattle like hippie tambourines. Newborn hawks in the Torrey Pine scream at the planets and stars.