MelaleucaNumber 9: March 2010 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis

Table of Contents

Details Andrew Burke 3

Judges Report for Young Mothers

Who Write

Andrew Burke 4

Whitebait Andrew Burke 5Agapanthus Barbara De Franceschi 6

Dystopia Barbara De Franceschi 7

My family & other animals Rae Desmond Jones 8

All works are copyright by their respective creators, 2010; the arrangement of this collection is copyright by Phillip A. Ellis, 2010.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License .

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Details

The house whispers

its discontent and keeps me up

with its incessant whining.

The trick would be to turn off,

like the filament in the bedside lamp

when I press the plastic button

beneath the shade. The physics

of the real world, not the metaphoric,

are life without you: the dozen

details of each eventbringing in

The West Australian, shaking it free

of dewdrops, watering your plants,

removing my wet sandals. Details.

Like the atmospheric control light

I've never noticed in

the refrigerator before. Beep,

it complains. Beep. Beep. Details

like that. I can tell you now

you're so far away how many

steps lead from the front door to

the letterbox. The house rises before me

and clears each room of any life

that might be there to join me

as I rise from my chair, walk out, say

'Hello?', return and read

your itinerary again.

Andrew Burke

3

Judges Report for Young Mothers Who Write

Thank you for letting me judge your competition.

Yes, your poets are well-schooled. The poems

were bitter sweet, and the quotes from offspring

of Young Mothers Who Write were

quotable over coffee. All images

turned well, like a well-tuned clavichord. Yet

I cant help thinking todays orchestra, if you dont mind

the metaphor, has more instruments in it: computer,

synthesizer, co-sine generator. All these

can be put to surprising use. Maybe its just me.

Perhaps I have read too much and now tire easily

of the well-schooled poem.

A piano has 88 keys, yet it also has strings,

a lid and legs. It is melodic and

percussive. Hit it! Let it ambush

the well-schooled listener. Let a leg

kick the melody around. In this world,

we are slaves to expectations, so again,

maybe its me poetry should jump the fence

and escape the ruts in the well-worn track.

Go out on a limb! In closing, may I thank you

especially for the well-penned cheque.

It hit the spot

just right..

Andrew Burke

4

White-bait

White-bait, those tiniest sliver

of silver words, swim into

my mind from dark nights

when Mother would feed

the surprise guest brought home

by Father with one too many

drinks in him. Many times

they would mumble apologies

while mother speared a tin

of King Sound White-bait

and started toast cooking.

Father brought home

interesting people, men

who had caught his ear

at the yacht club or the

Naval & Military Club:

an American film actor,

a CSIRO scientist, a touring

Italian pianist, a war hero

with tin legs. Mother would

heat whitebait slowly in

a cream sauce, and when

the toast popped-up (we had

a modern kitchen), she would

say, Sit down, sit down,

and all the white-baits eyes

would look-up at

my father and his guest

swaying like sailors

just come ashore.

Andrew Burke

5

Agapanthus

There is a cadence to agapanthus.Clumps stay evergreen

as a courtesy to all seasons,

tall summer flowers in white or blue

mesmerise a stunned sky.

Beetles stagger from making love

in the slender understorey,

grass swells into an ocean

as it tries to fathom the beauty

rising above other plant-life

like sacred cupolas.

The tone of this poem is delicate lingerie

falling petals

return secrets to pod.

Barbara De Franceschi

Dystopia

An old woman weaves human sinewson a loom with blackened notches.

A man seated on the stomach of a dead elk

carves antlers from petrified bone.

Pieces of burnt sky fall on desecrated ground,

stone passages with waylay on their mind

beat a howling chant.

Trees are unleafing one minute there is green

then everything changes,

landscape becomes whitehaired,

a summer frost consumes the air

in a damp shroud.

Reason clatters like an empty freight train

cocaine,

cocaine.Barbara De Franceschi

My family & other animals

Everything about them is so much of meDown to the appetite, a hungry sweet tooth,

A kind of inverted vomitDriven by passionate fury

At the inevitability of loss & death& a dogs capacity for obsessive love,

A lions lazy selfishness,The calm indifference of the elephant,

The cold smile of a snake baking on a road. Rae Desmond Jones