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Melaleuca
Number 44: February 2013 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis
Table of Contents
Stuart Barnes Lovesong 3
Tiggy Johnson That Zero Year 4
Tiggy Johnson White Lily 5
Vuong Pham Refugee Prayer 6
Betsy Turcot Being One of Four 7
Betsy Turcot Copper Pipes 8
All works are copyright by their respective creators, 2013; the
arrangement of this collection is
copyright by Phillip A. Ellis, 2013.
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Lovesong: after Keats Ode on Melancholy*
Whenever Im alone with you, we both
play dead, then cry out loud, why we always
cry this way? Whenever Im alone with
you, your white face leaves me blue, how can I
say all the things I have to say to you?Whenever Im alone with
you, why are
you so far away, why wont you ever
know that Im in love with you? Whenever
Im alone with you, am I seducing
or being seduced? You say that Ive changed
whenever Im alone with you, you say
that Ive aged, say Im afraid, it never
turns out how you want, why, why cant you see
it all just slips away, it always How
can you ever stop telling me you carewhenever Im alone with you?
Is there,
whenever Im alone with you, room in
your life for one more trip, trip to the moon?
Whenever Im alone with you, you slow,
or maybe I move too fast? Whenever
Im alone with you, do I wake as them
or you or we? Whenever Im alone
with you, why cant I be me? Whenever
Im alone with you, I fall through the stars,
you remember now, I fall in their arms,
you remember how? I fall through the skies,
you remember this, I fall in their eyes,
you remember the kiss? Can I tell you
when when whenever Im alone with you,
I hope you wont be leaving me alone?
Stuart Barnes
*a remix of just some of Robert Smiths lyrics (sourcesThe Cures
Lovesong,The Walk,
Speak My Language, Just Like Heaven, The 13th,Bare, Ocean, Wrong
Number, Signal
To Noise, Tweakers Truth Is feat. Robert Smith, Why Cant I Be
Me, The Reasons Why,This. Here And Now. With You). Lovesong appears
on Trilogy Live In The Tempodrom Berlin
November 2002; Trilogys epigraphAy, in the very temple of
Delight / Veiled Melancholy has
her sovran shrineis from Keats Ode on Melancholy
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That Zero Year
While the children are in care
or at school
we go out for lunch,
somewhere new.
The date is our present to each other.That and something for the
house.
Pots, TV
espresso machine
the glass cabinet that displays
wedding gifts we never use
and last year,
a house.
Were supposed to remember,
to celebrate,that zero year
when he wore the frangipani lei over his vest
and I wore the pearl dress
on a Pacific beach
in a different time,
and we do.
We try.
Amid the stress of Christmas,
days after our anniversary
(will you bring dessert?
is there anything the kids need?)
thoughts of the first year,
glowing, then dim:
in memories Im
rubbing my growing belly
as my brothers baby
dies.
While the children are in care
or at schoolwe go somewhere new for lunch
as ifIka Mata orsan choi bao
is all we need.
Tiggy Johnson
Previous appearance: Tiggy Johnson & Andrew Phillips, That
Zero Year(Jimboomba : T. Johnson,
2012).
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White lily
I touch the curve of my belly
Ive tried to hide
under the flow of black
chosen for Melbournes change.
I stand toward the backwhere I wont have to see,
where no one will see me.
One pink teddy bear.
Sandwiches, scones
teacups, saucers
chatter.
When hes seven
my son puts azaleas
by his great-nanas plaqueand a single white lily
on Sarahs grave
and asks if it hurt
when she died.
Tiggy Johnson
Previous appearances: SpeedPoets; Tiggy Johnson & Andrew
Phillips, That Zero Year(Jimboomba :
T. Johnson, 2012).
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Refugee Prayer
When I think about peace
I always think about a calm place
white
awash with sounds
wind lifting duneslike the curls of a fossil
somewhere
where the gun does not point at my father
and me
nor beats my mother
I remember the day Communist soldiers stole
her wedding ring
tossed it on the ground
where the red opal stirs memory
bleeding this changeling to madness
somewherewhere there is no machine gun rattle
as mother tucks me in bed
while she whispers a prayer
for an island across the sea
away from this rubble of a country
lying awake on the refugee boat
listening to the vast ocean
making conversation
peace
peace
peace
Vuong Pham
Previously published in: Sampad, Inspired by Tagore
International Writing Competition 2012.
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Being one of four
I waited for the nights when I alone would bask in her
attention.
When salmon p. wiggle simmered on the stove,
and I searched for peas, sifting through pink cream.
I sipped milk from a frosted glass and was careful not to spill
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these were special nights.
She ran the bath, bubbling to the top
and pulled the snowflake glass along its runner.
I lifted my leg over the high rim
and submerged my goose-bumped body.
Wrapped in a lavender towel, she patted me down
and settled me into a room of my choice.
Tucked in snug as a bug,
I waited wide-eyed for the bird to find its mother.
It was one last refrain of Goodnight Irene
before the nightlight came on.
And it was not the verses but the chorus
that settled me to sleep.
Betsy Turcot
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Copper Pipes
If my grandfather spoke, he would sound like Dan Rather,
baritone deep with the gravel of washed up pebbles
on Okinawas shore.
He would speak of the hospital ship seared into his
muscles,outlasting the rosebud faded into his forearm -
he loved his mom.
He would laugh with the click of his tongue,
reserved for Golden Retrievers,
holding out his palm with the tip of a hot dog.
But he sounds like Patsy Cline and Nat King Cole
playing softly from his golden pick-up truck
littered with tape measures, corduroy caps
and boxes emptied of Dunkin Donuts.
He whistles his creaky knees across the field
to his barn of copper pipes and nuts and bolts -
its best to hold onto these things, ya know?
Betsy Turcot
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