Tuesday Poem – Page 4

Tuesday Poem: The Stars, Natasha

Posted on June 6, 2011

Natasha, fundamentals are strong,
key indicators steady.
Leave your books, Natasha,
let your computer
draw patterns on its screen.

Walk with me through the heavens.
Along cold orbits
the spendthrift stars
squander their assets on light.
The World Bank

is unamused; the IMF
is noting down their names.
So take my hand
let’s drift away
into the cosmic background.

Credit note: This poem, included in my first poetry collection Boat People, was republished in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones (Interactive Press, 2009).

Tim says: With eight days to go until submissions close for my latest venture in speculative poetry, I thought I’d post a speculative poem of my own. It was written when World Bank- and IMF-inspired economic “reforms” were devastating the post-Soviet Russian economy, and laying the groundwork for the kleptocracy that runs Russia today.

Nevertheless, it’s more of a love poem than anything else…

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: Contact, by Tracie McBride

Posted on May 30, 2011

Once,
the idea of sex with aliens
might have appealed.

But,
having encountered
your loathsome race,
I am cured
of my deviancy.

You,
with your putrid salty stench,
your pore-pitted skin
oozing at the mere
mention of heat.

You,
with appendages
upon appendages
dangling from your
spongy carapace.

You,
with your tiny globular eyes,
your chaotic, misfiring brain,
and that blind pink parasite
squirming inside your mouth.

It’s enough to turn
all three
of my stomachs.

Credit note: “Contact” was first published in Kaleidotrope, April 2007. It was republished in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry From New Zealand, edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones (2009), and is included in Tracie’s new collection Ghosts Can Bleed.

Tim says: I will be posting my interview with Tracie McBride, a New Zealand poet and short story writer who’s now living in Australia, later this week. I asked her to send me a selection of her poems from which I could choose one as a Tuesday Poem, and although I liked all the poems she sent, I couldn’t go past this one, which is a particular favourite of mine from the Voyagers anthology. Science fiction poetry doesn’t have to be serious!

Tracie has a lot of interesting things to say in our interview: about being a ‘Kozzie’ – a Kiwi-Aussie; about her writing; and about the changing face of publishing – she’s also the vice-president of Dark Continents Publishing. Look out for our interview later this week.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: The Rapture In Reserve Grade

Posted on May 23, 2011

Fifth tackle, and they’re kicking
when the last trump sounds.
The chosen players rise
but fail to catch the ball
as it spirals sinfully to ground.

It’s six a side in heaven,
seven left behind. No tackler,
no first marker. The halfback,
that cocky little rooster,
grabs the ball and scoots away.

No fullback, either. He’s
showing a clean pair of heels
diving beneath the crossbar
and taking the conversion
as the first drops of blood touch the crowd.

Tim says: In the wake of last weekend’s seemingly erroneous prophecy, I thought it was time to post this poem, which appeared in my first collection, Boat People. In case the number of players involved puzzles you, I should point out that the game in question is rugby league (13 a side).

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: That’s Far Enough

Posted on May 16, 2011

That’s Far Enough
Unexplained force acts to slow Pioneer and other deep-space probes [news]

Like rotifers in a puddle
staring at the sky
we can look but not touch

It’s gentle at first
that force
but insistent

stay within the solar system
and no harm will come to you
you will be allowed the illusion of freedom

but stray too far
and we will have to take steps

nothing unpleasant, you understand
but the subtle application of a force
additional to gravity

gentle at first
but insistent
that force

till you slow,
stop, and return
to whence you came

bearing news:
the Universe is not for you
some things are sacred.

Tim says: As I’ve recently posted the guidelines for an online magazine issue featuring New Zealand and Australian speculative poetry (a term covering science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry, among others) that I’m editing, I though I’d post one of my own science fiction poems – well, a science poem, anyway. This one is from my first poetry collection, Boat People.

At the time “That’s Far Enough” was written, the trajectories of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft leaving the solar system and heading into interstellar space appeared to show that they were being acted on by a forced additional to gravity, which was gradually slowing them down. However, recent research may have accounted for the “Pioneer Anomaly”.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: Getting By

Posted on May 2, 2011

I’m not
jumping from a burning building with my arms on fire
not
crawling in the rubble, looking for my hand.
Geography has been so kind.

But a simple wish
can turn a streetscape to a moonscape
turn pink flesh
to whitened ash and bone.

I’m sitting by the window
wind
lofting soundscapes through the heavy air.
Boy racers, parties, sirens — bang!
A bomb? Could that have been a bomb?

I listen harder.
There’s no more sirens, no-one screams.
Just something falling, someone
hitting harder than they planned.

No bomb, no need to worry.
I’m writing
not exploding
getting by
not burning in a burning land.

Credit note: First published in All Blacks Kitchen Gardens.

Tim says: This jittery poem from the early years of the last decade seemed like an apposite one to post tonight.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: Cynara, by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Posted on April 25, 2011

Non sum qualis eram bonæ sub Regno Cynaræ

[‘The days when Cynara was queen will not return for me.’ – CATULLUS]

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! Thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone, gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Credit note: First published in 1896.

Tim says: Ernest Dowson is a minor and largely forgotten poet, yet he gave the English language the phrases “gone with the wind” (third stanza above), “days of wine and roses” (from “Vitae Summa Brevis”), and, on a more prosaic level, is the first recorded user of the word “soccer”.

Dowson’s poetry is an example of the doomed, late-Victorian romanticism and decadence most closely associated with the more famous Algernon Swinburne. The excellent Horizon Review has recently published an article by Katy Evans-Bush about Dowson and his place in the transition from Victorian sentimentalism to modernism.

But away, dull care! Begone, literary history! I like this poem for its over-the-topness, for its self-pity, and for that silly, and yet marvellously musical, line:

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng…

Tuesday Poem: The Aliquot Brothers

Posted on April 18, 2011

Boys in men’s shirts, the Aliquot Brothers
have come to town. They are

backing us into corners, mopping up
the fragments we leave behind.

They are the perfect combination.
The redhead paints his toes. The honey blond

streaks highlights through his hair.
They go café to café, dividing

to rule, smearing tablecloths
with froth and melted cheese. (The rest of us

confined to quarters, mumbling
over cold porridge and twice-strained tea.)

No use complaining: they’ll leave
when they’re good and ready,

with no remainder, nothing
but the hiss of their departure,

the closing door that splits
this world from its neighbour.

Credit note: “The Aliquot Brothers” was first published in Issue 14 of Interlitq, “A New Zealand Literary Showcase”. This issue has stories and poems by a wide range of New Zealand writers – it is well worth checking out. It will also appear in my forthcoming poetry collection Men Briefly Explained, published by Interactive Press of Brisbane.

Tim says: An aliquot is a number that divides another number evenly and leaves no remainder. That’ll be an NCEA Level 1 numeracy credit, please.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column. I’m very pleased to be this week’s Tuesday Poem editor on the main blog.

Tuesday Poem: The Translator

Posted on April 11, 2011

Shutting out the torment and the fear
deep into the night’s cold morning hours
I work on my translation.

Improbable, that in another tongue
such lines as these were born,
set down, are vivid on his page

and will not come across to mine.
Two ways to go: the forced rhyme
the flaccid filling phrase

or terse, unrhymed,
trying to capture the meaning
as if that could ever be known.

But something does translate —
a voice from bleak immensities
perfect for nights like these:

the wind’s forgotten murmur,
the war that beggars language
speaking the creole of slaughter.

Credit note: First published in New Zealand Books (December 2004), included in Best New Zealand Poems 2004, and then collected in All Blacks Kitchen Gardens.

Tim says: I have had something of a translation theme going with the Tuesday Poems on my blog recently, one way or another, and furthermore Best New Zealand Poems 2010 has just been launched – congratulations to all those who’ve had work selected! – so I though I would post my poem “The Translator”, which appeared in BNZP 2004. At that time, I also supplied an exuberant set of notes on the poem.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: Notes From The Futurist Project

Posted on April 4, 2011

You float like a cloud in trousers
I stand with my cow in the rain

Your poems electrified Russia
Your dams were a hymn to the rain

Your empire crumbled around us
As here and as gone as the rain

The birch tree lies by the roadside
Its branches are wept by the rain

The smoke of my village drifts upwards
Its ashes retreat from the rain

Your red square has entered the market
Its cobbles are slick with the rain

The future lies inside the present
As close as a cloud and its rain.

Credit note:First published in Lynx XXI:1, Feb 2006.

Tim says: This is my one and only published attempt at a ghazal. I don’t think it’s as fleet-footed as the ghazal by Mary Cresswell I posted last week, and in fact, I’d almost forgotten I’d written it – but then poet and photographer Madeleine Slavick kindly sent me an article by John Berger about the Russian futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, which touched on Mayakovsky’s ‘frenemy’ relationship with his contemporary, the Russian peasant poet Sergei Esenin (sometimes rendered as Yesenin).

To simplify greatly, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Mayakovsky tried to build the urban future in his poetry, while Esenin tried to preserve the rural past. Neither succeeded in life, though both did in art. Both died young and by their own hand.

In this poem, Esenin is the narrator, and Mayakovsky is the “cloud in trousers”, as he once referred to himself.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

Tuesday Poem: The Sound Of Now, by Mary Cresswell

Posted on March 28, 2011

The Sound Of Now
First line from Marie Ponsot, ‘Reminder’

I am rich. I am poor. Time is all I own.
Time is fair. Time is foul. I am all I own.

Pale hands pick me up and let me down again.
I smell shit and Shalimar. I smell cologne.

No matter on which page you hide, in which book,
I’ll know your name when I can’t recall my own.

A sob?… no, it’s a stab of recognition.
The knife cuts deeper. My thought is all I own.

They called me Marīa when I read Latin.
In this place I have no name to call my own.

Until the end, the sound of one hand clapping —
In the trees, the toucan plays a slide trombone.

Credit note:Published in Ambit 199: 71 (London; Martin Bax and Carol Ann Duffy, eds.) and reprinted in her new collection Trace Fossils.

Tim says: There are two good reasons that this is my Tuesday Poem for this week: first, it’s a fine and most elegantly constructed poem, and second, I am running an interview with Mary – my second interview with her – later this week on my blog. Keep an eye out for it!

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week’s other poems are linked from the right-hand column.