Thirsting for Lemonade Read online

and the sting of citrus on tiny cuts

  she never knew her fingers had

  because I want her to know it is the glint

  the sparkle of sun on fruit, the straightforward joy

  of quenching thirst: lemonade, just

  lemonade.

  Spaces

  Girl Talk

  – for Liz

  It was a lifetime ago

  we were accepting drinks

  asking for lights

  playing games of Truth with strangers

  who were definite maybes

  which turned to yeses

  and later to whys

  who made good cries

  and break-ups that hurt

  then mixed tapes for cheering-up

  and dancing wearing bleached blonde wigs

  shit was there laughter

  photographs and photographs of

  open mouthed

  closed eyes

  hands on stomach

  I could die

  laughter

  too many years for my fingers now

  we sang someday soliloquies

  and past unperfects of our parents

  who we swore we’d never be like

  while bikinis and bellybuttons

  and no you are assurances

  and confessions of condoms

  still in the wrappers

  leading to the occasional scare

  before the sun soaked wrinkles

  into my skin

  girlfriend, we roadtripped:

  state parks and cheap motels

  sorry looking hitchhikers

  fast food and fake names

  and more photographs and more

  photographs

  because before it all

  there was us

  and then I went and found myself

  by losing myself in this new country

  I met a man

  who gave me a son

  and we have sunshine

  when it rains

  kiwi salads

  are par for course

  and you ask me why I try so hard

  to live in the past

  if the present is what

  we’d always dreamed

  my identity is bigger than Australia

  I have tried to contain it

  in a single-fronted cottage

  near an old port town but it overflows into the Pacific

  and slithers toward the Rocky Mountains

  over through Shenandoah pine

  and rests upon some colonial monument

  glowing white in the dusk

  I tried to sum it up

  by amalgamating with my man

  and giving birth to our son

  but laid out and measured

  it covers more ground than my wedding ring

  is deeper than my purple stretch marks

  decades old, not waiting

  for its first tooth

  or landmark silver

  anniversary

  you’re staring at the Big Dipper

  getting on with life Up There

  not needing me because you’re complete

  in your ordered Northern sky

  knowing firm where you stand

  and me so very Southern Cross far

  will I ever make snow angels

  with our son

  and watch them melt

  with my man

  because it cannot be

  in Australia

  where I think I know who I am

  and how I have become this me

  but still I pray that I remain

  a bit of who I was back then

  right or wrong

  when I met you

  at a concert on the college lawn

  when we trespassed through our early twenties

  ignoring signs clearly marked

  when we’d hypothetically marry

  because he was hot

  secretly be disappointed to read negative

  on the pregnancy tests

  when Down Under

  sounded like sex.

  Gearing Up

  There’s some obscure station tuned in

  it’s funky, instrumental.

  Dresses and towels keep rhythm in the breeze

  while the pumpkin patch grows like a maze.

  Summer, yeah.

  Adelaide has 2 seasons:

  wet and festival.

  Jumper-wrapped and ugg-enclosed, we live like squirrels

  hording our acorns all winter long so when summer, yeah

  when summer comes

  we are starving

  searching our closets for brightness and what feels light

  and we come together without a plan or map to guide us

  through the city’s streets and we celebrate with mango

  dripping down chins, Riesling sploshing gold-painted glass rims, we celebrate, ravenously, the feast.

  Emblazoned

  – for Rebecca Locke

  She is five

  the strongest person I know.

  The dirt of the oldest mountain

  has cracked beneath her feet.

  I think of the blood pumping in her chest

  all covered by her fragile skin

  how it floods her body

  so when she jumps

  the clouds move

  animals prick their ears.

  My niece laughs for all that is good.

  She tells me a story about my brother

  and laughs (because he is good).

  He was always the funny one

  so clever on his feet.

  In her I see my brother.

  So I listen.

  And she loves me for it.

  And I love her for it too.

  My brother like my mother

  smiles and cries and cries while smiling

  so I want to tell this five year old girl

  that her life will be huge

  she will feel to the point of overflow

  and gush without shame daily,

  and when she needs friends surrounding her

  she will never be alone.

  Instead I reach for her body.

  We form a most natural fit

  as if we are used to each other

  having only met twice.

  She thinks I am nice and I make her happy.

  I think she is beyond belief.

  Don’t want to let go.

  It is more than my brother and my mother

  and my niece wrapped in my arms;

  it is one of those things you don’t forget.

  The things that are especially good

  because they cannot last.

  Spices

  One cannot bite at soup

  halfway round the world.

  In Australia the soil screeches red

  and chilies fill my eyes.

  The sting of white wine

  apples, sweet and sour sauce

  bean sprouts bringing me back

  to four hands, an oiled wok

  pork, pumpkin, lips on my ear.

  Here I need a scarf and sweater

  even indoors

  sipping leek soup.

  At heights of burning dislike

  I loved you more than mushrooms

  more than Adelaide and airplanes away

  more than lukewarm ale.

  Lime leaves remembered

  I’m licking my lips

  thinking you’ve always been enough to eat

  to ask for seconds still dripping of firsts.

  Here is my pocket

  a calling card, a pay phone

  in the corridor.

  You could be eating dinner now

  something Asian in Australia

  that sting again of a white wine washing

  spices from your tongue.

  Tell me you love me

  you want to eat me

  you cannot live a day without me

  and together
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  we’ll burp—

  my lunch

  your dinner

  our love our love our

  sweet and sour love.

  Memorise

  Those days we flew, occasionally swooping

  to dip our toes in grassy puddles –

  the shiver at the back of my neck

  sometimes I still feel .

  Those days, the drinks

  were tri-weekly bottles of Sav

  the Baileys and backgammon in the middle of our bed

  mimosas to remind us of how we began our first New Year.

  When did we sleep?

  Those days we soared on love

  lived off little more than extended blinks

  too busy with the view

  from three hundred metres:

  waves pushing inward on rocky land masses

  our lifestyles evolving

  the photosynthesis of Eucalyptus leaves.

  Overnight low of 34, but the breeze…

  And after it was over we lay on the swag

  dreamlike, discussing the happy face cloud

  how one illuminated a seahorse

  across the 11pm norwestern sky.

  Easy prey

  – the hottest day in 70 years

  a power outage silencing our space

  candles and some satellites

  and then there is I love you.

  Those clouds, how they claimed us

  moving above and over our bodies

  by the breeze that dried our heat-wave sex.

  There was lightening too.

  It was like writing a poem.

  Or reading one.

  An exceptional one.

  Collective

  We’ve formed this circle that morphs with each breath

  weight shifting from leg to leg

  with the rocking of the sarong-draped pram.

  There is somewhere to be but the man in the middle

  holds a chair in one hand, a unicycle in the other.

  His parents must have encouraged greatness

  said it’s okay to talk to strangers

  let him run everywhere.

  Five minutes have passed and we’ve morphed to smiles

  so now we’re touching shoulders.

  His unicycle zig zag is like a child’s mad scribble

  on the city’s pavement floor.

  We answer questions about ourselves

  lay bare our imagination and shout out scenarios.

  Friends and lovers wait at cafes

  checking mobiles, texting other people.

  We morph to applause and sounds that escape

  our parted lips as he balances a chair

  in the palm of his hand

  still a single tyre.

  I think briefly how I balance daily

  and never a crowd gasps.

  And when he’s done, we’re done—

  we dissolve into the walking crowd

  our circle now a series of impossible dots.

  Why Painting is Like Geometry

  At university in Music Theory I learned about mathematics.

  Between binge drinking and finding my soul

  I discovered the inevitable:

  inspiration doesn’t become creation without fine tuning.

  I bought a Dave Brubeck CD and listened while I studied

  while I strove to write poems without counting syllables

  while I ate two minute noodles and drank six packs of beer

  while I tried to sleep to my roommate fucking

  in time to beats of jazzed up fives

  a coed from the second floor.

  I memorised melodies and had to do equations

  and questioned my vocation as would-be poet

  because Take Five wasn’t a stroll down an alley

  of garbage cans and scurvy cats, the woman in red

  a hobo whistling, a man in a suit with an alto sax;

  it was perfect numbers from fractions

  with order and reason

  and from it came rhythm and song.

  I wanted to be that woman in red, that very sax

  because I wanted to believe that magic lies within the muse

  and the artist and the sound and the word and the pen.

  I wanted to heed the creed of art for art’s sake.

  I was eighteen.

  I only just passed Music Theory

  then ascended to drinking bourbon and cokes

  lost my virginity at a party.

  That boy dumped me in two week’s time

  while the bourbon took turns with cheap red wine

  and I wrote poems on life-til-now

  while others took notes in Art 101

  on why painting is like geometry.

  before noon

  backyard table

  water bottle and phone

  The international dateline confuses calendars, friends

  and relatives (who I take less lightly)

  so they all have an excuse.

  Here’s to calling card expirations

  and the baby’s almost due

  and I didn’t get home until late last night.

  Here’s to my forever forgiving

  simply just forgot.

  But know this:

  on my birthday

  here so far

  from the reaching

  Blue Ridge Mountains

  of my old backyard

  I am waiting.

  The telephone is on the outdoor table

  and this day is hot,

  like the summer tried to sneak away

  got caught red sweaty handed

  spilled all over my body.

  I wish the scent of the ocean three kilometres away

  for my son to sleep a full two hours

  to tan myself bare

  thinly layered sunscreened skin

  wisteria my thick fortress.

  Sweet family and those pictures of party hats

  children with vague names

  brown and green corduroy clothes

  of the mid 70s we all wore –

  remember this day.

  Colour me into your latest photo

  and stick it on the fridge.

  Undomesticated university girls

  the river dudes with holey jeans

  my two year tangle mistake

  who shared my tiny bed –

  our drinks were always raised to the camera’s lens

  so raise your drinks now, beyond your horizon –

  it’s midnight your time

  and I’m before noon

  water bottle ready.

  I wish for the dj playing soul

  to keep on spinning until I rise

  as I wish for accents like my own

  home gently blowing the roundness of the letter r –

  here’s to diminishing time zones

  music, oceans, telephones, the sun.

  Here’s to simply one more day.

  Sophia Street Ghost Stories

  – for R.P.

  We sat beading on the couch

  necklaces that would carry colour

  to our vegetarian cosmetic-free skin.

  No secret we lived in a morgue from Civil War days

  and this south of the bloody Mason-Dixon Line

  so the patter of running feet that followed the sound

  of breaking glass didn’t shock, but still our eyes

  widened and brightened to light bulbs.

  In fact it was the light bulb that intrigued us.

  The way it broke so the middle remained

  and the surrounding sides had smashed to the ground

  all over the ground so we had to put on shoes.

  That was Virginia and now you’re in Scotland

  while I have a family in Australia.

  Nearly twenty years later I understand the permanency

  of the Sophia Street Ghost.

  I see how quickly our feet have shuffled<
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  how loud was the noise as we stomped over the earth

  how fast we blinked one scene to the next

  how our bodies transcended space so easily

  even laden with flesh and burdened by bone

  carrying all of that air in our lungs.

  We lived with that ghost on a daily basis

  expecting the most unexpected reminders

  and spine-tingle smiled when our own bedrooms

  had been its canvas of quiet communication.

  I never thought then if it wanted to be in that 3 storey home

  for a hundred years, if it wanted to live somewhere else.

  We write to one another about meeting in the middle:

  a holiday in Greece between Scotland and Australia

  while just over the Atlantic lies the Sophia Street Ghost.

  I click at the keyboard:

  perhaps in the end it is death

  that will ground us.

  Press “send” to the satellites.

  Leaving the Adelaide Hills

  – for Tim Sinclair

  We were talking poetry in between spoonfuls of mousse

  while the winter sun warmed the floor that nearly froze

  the night before and I think it was then I commented on

  the kitchen table as the cosy spot. You said you feared

  not feeling free to walk to the shop for a carton of milk

  in these very same uggs.

  New York gave you insight into rhythm and rhyme,

  scraped heels on black boots made of thick leather

  and a knowledge of the subway system.

  She made you an Other

  and did it so well

  you fit her like a puzzle piece.

  So what did I think?

  That you would return to your kitchen table

  like a cat to a window to soak up sun?

  Next it will be Sydney.

  I do long for you to claim the space:

  find a regular sushi bar, a favourite op shop

  where you grow to greet the old ladies by name

  patronise a local serving Toohey’s on draught

  pine away for Coopers Pale Ale

  and when it happens – Sydney, the milk –

  will you hands-in-pocket walk straight backed

  with your city slicker confidence to the corner store

  wearing hole-worn uggs?

  Owning comfort, giving it a name

  calling on your Bridgewater roots?

  So much depends upon ugg boots.

  Two Women Staring at the Stars