Feminist Graphics for the Day

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Poem for the Day: Saucy

Saucy

This man with the sauce bottle
has great hands
his shirt a neon sign
but it suits his silver hair
carved, brushed skin.

I imagine undressing him
in a room
where he smiles
etches information
into our private sleep.

Perhaps we're drinking coffee
from each other's lips
buying chips and fish
enjoying layers of the day.

Then I return to my first draft
of Lake-side Friends.
The rest of my poem
I gift to him.

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Poem for the Day: Black Hairy Caterpillar (from Miniscule) ©

Black Hairy Caterpillar

After the charge around the room,
the black caterpillar curled not to move,
I walked away without knowing if he
would turn around, stick his tongue out.

The weight he pulls is heavy
all those legs underneath, the tall
assemblage of hairs, flashing red face
navigating a wall with no ears.

He goes forward with timid stiffness,
climbs down to the floor, door opening.
He starts to run, sliding first, his body
bowing up like a Greek symbol.

I couldn't hold him back. Could you?
Beating the air with his tiny heart,
dreaming of a windswept courtyard
of quiet, of space, of leaf matter.

When I least expect, he's back.
No change on his face, legs and hairs
spread along the gutter. Will he fall?
Be swallowed by some greedy mouth?

I think of the creatures of Sylvia Plath.
The ones she wrote in a poem. Would
she say? 'The weight of his life is small.
Let be. Let be.'

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Poem for the Day: Lost Property by Tracy Ryan

Lost Property

To be alone in the wide room                                                                     

In the house’s crooked elbow, turning point                                                

For extensions as the family grew                                                               

And grew – and grew – to be alone in the one room                                     

Nobody needed now, though it might be resumed                                       

Like land, for guests or blow-ins, at any moment,                                         

Without notice (and that was part of                                                           

The appeal, the very tenuous feel of the place), to play there                        

At five or six to be immersed though not safe among the things                    

That proceeded you, immediate and limitless,                                             

Everything already there, the way the world went on                                   

Before you were thought of, the flux, and your small-child                            

Leisure for introspection while others shinnied trees for the same                 

Sense of endless outlook, here,                                                                  

In this would-be attic brought down to earth, whose breath                         

Was frosty on Mother Shipton’s well, holding the tossed refuse                     

Of older siblings, stages shrugged off: limp tutus, ping as dropped               

Gum blossom, too big, though you stepped                                                

Into them and stood, as if in a fairy ring you might animate:                        

Satin and tapshoes, toe-shoes from a sister’s long gone bit-part                   

In Hans Christian Andersen, poems called Off the Shelf                               

That you avidly grabbed for your own, puzzled                                          

At faded marginal doodles in real ink:                                                        

Dark ocarina whose holes you could never master,                                     

Bakelite cracked, spookily fake-organic,                                                    

As if a new kind of reptile had laid it,                                                         

And a distant, shadowy instrument, lipped, where fingers should sit,            

With verdigris your father later chastised you for rubbing –                          

An oboe perhaps – resisting your grip, but venting                                     

A slow corruption in you as descant,                                                         

Its distant kin in this vast orchestral silence:

Strange octagon you toyed with that would never quite close or open,

Squeeze box, little lung resisting pressure, push and draw, your hands

Impeded from fully parting or meeting, stretching

In musical secretion, cat’s cradle ectoplasm,

Crimped membrane so vulnerable to puncture,

It made you wince, lantern-thin but giving sound

For illumination. At last: harmonica, cupped, bracketed but not

For all that an afterthought, heart of the whole unpeopled

Space, for the way it moulded to your own small wheeze

And gave it a different life, if a pleasure to the player only,

Pleasure to make your mouth water, metal, felt, and papery

Velvet, though your brother might shudder

At the old spit he imagined pooled there,

To your it was honeycomb,

Striving to isolate each note, then giving up,

As if you had many voices at once, speaking in chords,

And could make yourself heard.

- Tracy Ryan

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Reading my Poetry at the Moon Cafe, 22nd Sept 2012

I will be reading my poetry from my new collection "of Arc & Shadow" at the Perth Poetry Club on Saturday, 22nd September: 2-4pm. Venue: The Moon Cafe,  323 William Street, Northbridge. Poets are usually given a 10 minute time slot and I will also be appearing with Alan Hancock, a new voice in poetry.  My selection may even include, dah, dah! Purple Swamphens.  Check out their other guests for September through to November, 2012. http://www.perthpoetryclub.com/22-sep-helen-hagemann-alan-hancock-joanna-neave
All welcome!

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Poem for the Day - Purple Swamphens

Purple Swamphens

some purple hides near the tail

they go on making it from blue

gradually you become aware

of their bill in red, turquoise chest

to tiny face, white undertail,

brown and orange feet

the only purple is a distant view

of perfumed jacaranda

when purple is floral and warm

it settles on the sky over slatted roofs

when you go down to the water’s edge

Swamphens run in pairs, black tails

flicking Morse code amongst the reeds

an exquisite creature, runs a four-way spread

of feet as a fretwork to its flighty footwork

when purple socks hang to dry

you go on seeing that swamp-bird fly

not wade to the bank on the other side

purple socks fly in the wind, and when snug

inside your shoes, that space between foot

and cuff can’t be seen

much like the purple

on a black and Purple Swamphen 

Photographs by Helen Hagemann (c)

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Poetic Pic for the Day - Yes-Men for Poets

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Poem for the Day - Old as Cows Are (from the Irish Suite)

I visited Ireland for three weeks in September 2011, and walked along the same roads and laneways every morning while staying in county Monaghan, at a writers' centre. I photographed interesting landscapes and came across this derelict house. It was too overgrown to go inside, but I could see inside, nevertheless.

Old as Cows are

A house sits in a field

uncared for.

Grey calm of slate roof

and a chimney’s cold air, puffing.

Year after year this cottage,

married to weeds, dies in bracken

and an ivy graveyard. Death for life.

Trees holding onto their view,

blackberry vines curl with fruit, saplings

spire by sentinels of wired posts.

A door sits back like a mouth where

no food enters. Windows look out

from a darkness within. A magnolia tree

is the last, healthy touch of a family,

planting. The raw stillness of it. 

And they who farmed here, gone,

foisted with the fight of poverty. White-

washed bricks, old as cows are, strengthen

in the sun; a face that sings to no-one, or

for whoever comes.

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