does nothing, changes everything
round
serving tray
trimmed in cane
with laminated roses
on which, as a baby
I sat
dimpled melon head
on delicate neck
whatever happened
to that tray
or that fragrant baby
I cradle now
in my forty-sixth lap
my alien
daughter’s rage
the ruffled lace
my mother’s
apron-string-crossed
back by the stove
not
turning round
to hold me
Â
It happened in a city whose sardine terraces
press against              in utmost modesty
in cramped contrast
through a glass case   : :     sky pivots   : :
The base of Pot with Pink Stripes is a
black neck                  perfectly balanced against
but skewed asymmetrically to the left
though it depends on the angle of looking.
The pastel stripes strip
varying widths as if
applied slowly over the white
with a flat brush when once upon
this lopsided pot was turning.
I am reminded of my egg in its cup in the morning.
I am reminded of the moon, three days after,
hung like a spark box over the pylon,
the rippled tin roof of your shed. Does it matter
if I tell you                             the base of the pot
is you and I standing stunned at the sink
at midnight                 a yellow square rushes backwards
Who is to say that the literal light,
moving from room to room, was just another ordinary Tuesday?
Sexist language was levelled against—
I am still untangling the laundry.
                       What Australian housewives need to understand …
Â
 but Angela Brennan, Australian born, 1960, whose
Pot with Pink Stripes spins in its glass box
does not hold you. You walk on, pulling at my sleeve.
Â
In another room, a nude figure sun-
bakes in king tidal splendour on a rooftop terrace in Italy.
Here, the scumbled light on earthen walls is pastel, pearl
and brickwork. Looming above, in the complicated grey,
red in its mesh and verticals, the concave dish
of a radio receptor spirals a juggernaut stair.
How the red steps chime with the slats
in lilac, shut turquoise, methane. Ovoids
eerie the tops of the walls. Scarlet
geraniums wink against a jet-black interior.
Through which I enter the moon.
Â
in Bogan Town make a perfect
O-shaped hair doughnut peeling
off the scream with an interior
brush inside four windowless walls
(narrow-doored servant quarters)
in which I nurse a pair of llamas
with long-lashed eyes whom I met
as dolphins when I leapt from the dock
into their dreams, braving the dirty
foam-wracked waves without volition
as they swam into me to sup
as llamas on human milk
their sorrow part of whatever they sought,
still dolphins at heart, shapeshifters
who had foreseen beyond this dream
the draining of their sea. Fully awake
then for my first day of work in polo
shirt and tights, I am met
by a man beside my car
whipping a tree with his belt,
his visage a violent stew—
and I burn my fingers getting into
the car as his voice lays into two
small daughters on the curb in mini-
school skirts and bows, struck
to the quick that they must follow
this shout, who marches off
without looking behind him,
a pulse of hot concrete forcefully
threading his belt back in.
previously published
Best of Australian Poems 2021, Guest Editors Ellen Van Neerven & Toby Fitch, p. 169.
(This poem also received second prize in the 2021Â MPU Annual International Poetry Competition).
