As it Develops, Shoes, Sydney, Hobart, & The Cloven Huon by Emilia Leonetti
As it Develops
They bar us from the table
Because tonight the kings are dining.
The appetiser
Leaves of grass
Freshly picked from my mother's garden
Where I once laid on my back watching clouds
Where I bared my soul to my lover
Where I buried bones so my dog could find them
Sprinkled with lemon and pink pepper.
The main Cinder bricks
That encased us each night
Witnessed every single hot flash of anger
Each quiver of sadness
Each nervous, each forced, each hearty laugh
Leered at us through each act of lovemaking
Smelled each hot chicken dinner
Served with an extra helping of mortar. For dessert
The roof
Complete with tarpaulin
The roof
The sole protector of
Aggressive raindrops
Ferocious hailstones
Fierce sun rays
Provoked winds.
My weighted blankets, their napkins.
Curtain rods, their toothpicks.
The bath. A spoon.
Picture frames, now serving tongs.
They bar us from the table
Because tonight the kings are dining.
I can only see so much
Behind their banner
That says "Lend Lease".
Shoes
Yesterday
When lazy clouds drifted on high
When sunrays punctured a tired sky I said goodbye.
Yesterday
I planned to close your door
Pick your shoes off the floor
No second try.
Yesterday
I had a brillo pad
Ready to scrub all the dirt and scruff
Your old Doc Martens had.
Yesterday
You closed the door.
Your shoes were strewn
Across the floor.
You said you’d always wash them,
You always said “next month”,
Like you were prey in lamplights
And I was on the hunt.
I’d always sigh and grit my teeth,
I’d always fold my arms
I’d always be the UV light
To your superficial charms.
God knows I’d put angels in strangleholds
Fight time with my bare hands
To make you see
I’m not your enemy
I’m not made of demands.
My arms are left unfolded.
My hands are callous and bare
From all the times they’ve touched my face
Now I know you’re not there …
Yet I will never wash those awful shoes
You always used to wear.
Sydney
Sydney and I haven't spoken in six months.
The last I saw of her was through a raindrop-splattered taxi window.
She looked beautiful, as always.
Green leaves and brown trees accessorised her grey outfit.
She looked stern and industrious, as always.
Until that day, seeing her flat, grim face, she was my one and only.
I spent 24 years taking her name as my home.
I spent 24 years with my body in her playground
I spent 24 years sitting on her.
Which definition of "sitting on her" you conclude as the best choice is up to you
Since all apply.
I sat on her benches, sandwich in a paper bag, the one order I swore I would change
one day but never did.
I sat with my backpack, waiting 20 minutes for the next bus
to go one hour from a humble tree-lined street to the bright lights of boutique fashion stores
For no reason other than window shopping is the most aesthetically-pleasing passive activity I could do.
I sat silent in plush seats, thinking that if I had food stains on my white shirt, I was done for,
I was doomed,
it was over.
I sat on her beaches, thinking that my life was owed
To the vast expanses of water before me
Millions of people crowded behind me
They never saw me
But I saw Sydney.
I sat in Hyde Park
Among fountains so elated
And excited
Satiated, that
They squirted!
And millions of people crowd beside me
They lie next to me
They talk, they keep the rhythm
On picnic blankets
Their voices snare drums
They crash, they ride
And in their own special music
They didn't see me
But I saw Sydney.
I sat in her restaurants
I sat, even with jackhammer noise
And tradesmen shouting slurs outside
Because I loved her.
I ordered things outside my budget
Because Sydney and I
We were fragile and fleeting
And god knows if I was ever crossing diagonally
The man started flashing
And a car hit me
During my flashbacks
I would have seen nothing
Just me in a hotel room
With a coffee and a notepad.
Just me and Sydney not speaking.
A nondescript skyline in front of me
Where I could be in some
Midwestern US city
Or some beach in Cuba
Or some village in Nairobi
But I know for a fact
That I didn't know where I stood
All I saw was Sydney.
And Sydney didn't see me
But I always saw Sydney.
And I still do, through my window If I trace her skyline with my mind
And pretend she can see me.
Hobart
People like to say
I make strange analogies.
It's true, I mean
Who doesn't believe that
The world's economy is managed
By those little blue aliens
From Eiffel 65's "I'm Blue" video?
Or that University was like
Being a sheep with a cane
Somehow comfortably lodged
Between the clefts in your hooves
Herding sheep in your flock
To another pen full of sheep?
Like ... you can see it right?
I see Australia as a classroom.
An old curmudgeon presides the space
His cane and his values from 1955
Dense, grainy, unyielding.
I sit beside Sydney
She and I have been best friends
Since we were babies.
Her in her Gucci suit,
Me in my Kmart rags
Ain't we a pair.
I speak to her
Her eyes are fixed
And so is her smile
No response.
Melbourne sits in front of her
Boho chic
The room does not switch on
Until she enters
She smiles like God himself
Screwed fairy lights between her teeth.
Her and Sydney never saw eye-to-eye
They just gave the school
Their daily dose of schooyard brawls.
Hobart sits at the back of the room.
I don't speak to her
You don't speak to her
No-one speaks to her.
She smells like apples and old, dusty books.
Her mouth is shaped like a large, twisted gash
Lines drawn on by the light from other peoples's light bulbs
She lives in a Campervan, you can tell
Because the world is etched on her face.
Sydney sniffs at her.
Says Hobart couldn't catch her hand-me-downs
Not anything if she tried
She's a bogan, a redneck
An old girl in a new-age world
I look down at my $10 Kmart sweater
I say nothing.
I say nothing.
Until the walls of the classroom fold away
Books become bark
Desks grow tall and sprout leaves
And leaves fall down and make wet piles in the grass
And there is Hobart and no-one else
Sydney in her large, Federation house only she lives in
Melbourne in her laneway with a latte
Brisbane on the beach
Perth in the paddock
Canberra in a chamber
Adelaide ... somewhere
And me with Hobart.
And Hobart holds out her hand,
I take it.
It feels like dry parchment
Like the world is etched on her palm.
We hear nothing except the trickle of nearby streams.
The dull, controlled thud of an apple
Falling onto a patch of moss.
She twists her lips together
And blows, the whistle of a wind
Tangles our hair
And my fingers twine around her fingers, gnarled
And air presses down my neck, the cold
Air the broom,
We the dust I breathe deeply
I shut my eyes
The bell rings.
The Cloven Huon
Home.
Home.
Home.
Taxi.
Plane.
Bus.
Bus.
Bus.
House.
Trees.
Mountain.
Mountain.
Hill.
When you dragged me to greener pastures
Hauled me up a high dirt hill
To see the trees sprawl over grassland
See a mouth of river spill
I let the ponds and rivers catch defiant tears.
I let my heart rest until ...
When you loaded me on tin can flying foxes
All my childhood stuffed in boxes
I sighed, and sewed my wayward lips
Shut, my fists caught fingertips
That shook, and trembled,
And said “no, please”, but still I let my heart rest until ...
When you showed me paddocks empty
Present in a life idyll
Omniscient and secret-keeping
Prone to all a verbal spill
Since no one dared to traverse
The people-less barren scape avant,
The life and loves I knew once gone,
My vessel with feeling scant, and still I let my heart rest, until
The life that’s now is all at stake.
Silence a knife, home a cake
That’s poisoned with our words unspoken
What once existed, now is broken
My bed a sacred hiding place
My bed, a fort to save my face
Do not open these doors, they wobble still
My heart not resting, tears they spill
And still
You tear this house down
You tear this house down
You tear this house down
But even with a love that kills
And silence fills a house till it spills
And I pick up bricks with wordless tongue
And set upon this life of mine
And set upon this life of mine.
Executive Producers:
Sarah Hunt
Sue White
Daniel Henson
