Allegro con brio, Disappointment, New world, On intimacy, & The other room by Stephanie Powell
Allegro con brio
In a seizure I give it all away.
A seizure that shudders to a
halt and hardens on the page.
In this seizure there is madness
but also, allegro con brio-
a dazzling burn. Lightness.
I throw it all away as though
pushing things out
a train window into
nowhere meadows-
amongst anonymous
sheep faces.
Clots of clay, spinifex
reclaim and bury the roots.
I don’t need, I don’t need,
I don’t need, I mantra in unbuckling.
Disappointment
Again, you wear your anger like a helmet,
the sound of a swarm approaching.
Danger at your cul-de-sac lips,
no business with the polite start and end of emails.
Your head a helmet.
Your mouth a helmet.
Eyes freshly sandbagged. It seems we are preparing for a hurricane.
I find you raging into the sink,
taking it out on the cups and saucers-
I don’t see anger,
but fear of something unrealised.
I see your helmet.
I see your iron.
I want to remove the buzzing metal
in your veins.
Remove the under fabric.
Take you back to your skin,
its softer rhythm-
wash through the heated membranes
with gravity-
hoping we could always live midway,
where the air is calmer, the days
just us.
New world
Who’s there? A question mark of unsealed state road, our new car-
our first shared thing.
Swarm of dust and stone at the rear window.
In the passenger seat you are taking photos of it all with virgin eyes, how knotted and unending it seems even to me. Double-exposed eucalypts and fence posts, speeding scenery. How we edge our way along this ridge at the breath of something beautiful and life-taking.
Is this your version of Australiana?
The towns passed by,
elderly main streets-
the hotel, the Anglican church, the general store- tricked out, fancified
The bushland, steel windmills, covered verandas, stacks of wheat rolled up like liquorice, red parrots punctuating the sky.
I am waiting for you to say, here it is, this is it,
exactly how I imagined it.
I am no longer the ex-pat. I’m watching
while you are leaning back,
learning a new vocabulary-
my hands at the wheel
and we are going fast, but we could say, somewhere here it is,
somewhere here we are.
On intimacy
It gives a malted taste to tea-sugar,
I know to let the bag settle for another minute before the milk,
or you’ll leave it until lidded by a pale skin.
Muddy the sink with the spent, untasted leaves.
You are as familiar and dear to me as this high street of Turkish nail salons,
bakeries and off-licences-
the shopfronts, their cartoon lettering,
the humming parade of people and passing buses.
I slide across parquet to you at the table,
aided by the tilted foundations of this old house.
We are swaddled in a marshy air; the radiators burn on-
it has been an unsure spring,
surrounded by calm and solid furniture.
Outside it smells of incoming storm and broken trees.
I lower the mug beside your right hand,
it is still steaming.
You are distracted, turning the pages of a book,
tearing at your fingernails with your teeth-
a balled-up tissue in your palm.
The lightning has started,
it is coming apart over the high street,
our house-
bright flashes as though taking photographs.
We are in the living room,
posing for a still life.
The other room
has been laid out, some boxes
cleared, a bed made up carefully,
the broken venetian fixed,
windows unbolted, the wardrobe
cleared of old coats and all the
spare things bagged for charity.
The double bed, too small for us
a satellite on wheels we
slip the polished tide unbound,
losing pillows when we turn over,
bump elbows into ribs,
knees pressing into buttock flesh,
back of thigh. Bruises flourish like
rings of flowers.
In our proximity I dream I am as
spinose as a puffer fish and when
I wake up you are covered in thorns
I don’t move or breathe (hardly) to
save you from injury.
And in this room we return to
sleeping children, but married,
warmed by the sheets my
mother washes and dries on
good drying days in good
drying weather under the
fig tree and shitting miner birds.
Still getting used to the feel
of floorboards, the coolness of
this house is in the daytime.
I find myself measuring
days again like childhood,
always willing the passing of time.
