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THE DEMOLITION KID
Andrew Pike
(SplashHall Poetry & Art)
stars dip their heads
in and out of the atmosphere.
the pet shop boys announce -- go west...
my father veers his truck
between pre-dawn buses,
landing alongside a mcdonald
sign on paramatta road.
today, apartments grow there,
but fifteen years ago bloomed
a golden M, thirty feet high.
i smile out my window.
father, glum at the prospect
of taxis and glowing pale yellow
from the dashboard gauges, he
turns to me and asks; son,
are you hungry?
--
to work, in an alley off george street.
sunlight leaks down the western walls;
down the rear porches of first floor lofts,
smeared in peeled apricots.
first things first...
son, let’s learn to tie a sheepshank.
afterwards, bring down the jackhammer, the grinder
and the wheelbarrow,
and try not to make so much noise;
this is residential.
can you handle this?
of course.
i prove to co-workers how many bricks
i can wield in a wheelbarrow,
up a flexi-board mountain.
sixteen was my record at age eleven...
...the boss’s son.
gasps all ’round.
--
the rich man’s restaurant; a mesh of gyprock, studs and brick.
the centrepoint tower; a black prong in an amorphic skyline.
the harbour bridge; half a web over a buzzing river...
out back, the one way traffic
and a white truck, etched in silver scars,
leaning from the sidewalk
into bitumen.
--
the stench of grease from central station
outflanks the aroma of coffee beans
being cracked open in michel’s cafe.
nevertheless,
by ten a.m. i become the caffeine boy.
a notepad in hand,
my writing is uncursed and primitive;
2 s m, X 5.
and for henry - an egg and bakan roll.
a fifty crumples in my fist
and i scamper through the metal nest.
--
the red afternoon tucks itself into a corner
pocket of the earth. white ball, sinking colour
into the landscape as i linger outside the ettamogah.
it is one of those night jobs
i conceal from mother.
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BEES IN THIN HOURS
Nanette Rayman River
(The Critical Poet)
The ache will find me near white flowers, yes, white and magenta
in the projects
I find bees gunning down the humble Silent Ladies Tresses
displaced here among
a thousand brides in water, seven thousand in cement -- kneeling
beside me.
We lie like an argument against the pavement, listen to the bees’
decrescendo,
how they bear witness against a life soured, doors firmly closed
to any light
I could turn to. How it evaporates quickly in this oven of shadows,
news to broadcast
that won’t be heard. Who to cry to and how to cry? The blackflies
are biting
your soft under-bicep, honey, and the clouds are singing. Our
vast deaf ears
lay ringing beside dead brides. These are thin hours when bees buzz
in the outskirts
of lives never meant to happen-- like this. A sudden hush catches us
off guard,
makes mephitic fervor of the night, without whiff of why. We curl useless
legs around
poor sky. Our last magenta inhalation. There are no words.
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THE RIVAL
Laurie Byro
(Desert Moon Review)
Long afterwards I knew she had entered
my house, not as a scavenger,
a buzzard or a gull, but as a wagtail.
She cocked her head and studied me
as I hung blue sheets on the line. The silence
and fluttering I’d loved as a child had polished her
a lustrous yellow. Lot’s wife could be dissolved
into a night of salty stars but what to do
with her? In feverish August I willed snowflakes
on my skin to ease the summer heat. I warned
her to leave us for exotic Africa, chanted
your name as idle sunshine buttered
her wings. I preened myself to prepare
for my late migration from jealousy to song.
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VOICE-IN-LAW
C. King
(Blueline Poetry Forum)
I know her voice, too soft for understanding
but with alarming sibilants, like rust.
The worry of the decades moves her mouth
and throat to make the indistinct more harrowed.
I lose the nuance. And, again, I lose it.
My wife, of course, can hear the tiny vowels
and doesn’t mind how half the consonants
are shouted while the other half are missing.
She hears anxiety as kiln-fired love
and slight approval as confetti rainbows.
I wonder, now, how my own mother sounds
without the filter of my understanding,
the singsong tones, the braced sincerity
that I know as the cautious woman’s care
for those sewn on her tapestry of life.
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