Two poems in The Amphibian. You can read the poems here:
The Soft Underbelly Of Memories
Is this where we buried our milk tooth, Nancy
by the boundary wall where the mud was damp
and mica rose to the surface in gossamer froth
when rains fell, expecting to see it turn into a gold
the next day?
Dug, buried, stomped
with the rest of the gang
when we really were good for nothing
our hair gritty with sand and rebellion.
Thrashed, dragged, pulled
like errant nincompoops, by Mother
from inside Amina’s Maxi, of all places,
to escape detection.
I won't reveal how many hours we rambled around
in the back-of-the-beyond eucalyptus forest
breathing air that felt like grandma's ‘good-health’ potion
Won't reveal how we scratched our way through brambles
and briars our thighs, elbows ledgers of bloody cuts
and bruises not knowing then
that life would extract from us much more than blood
that it would bring us to our knees.
Is this where we lived, my friend?
In a cluster community
where everyone knew everyone
where I howled like a banshee to see Daddy
playing the festival of colours, bare torso
his vest tied around his head like a turban
looking disgracefully unfamiliar.
There's no worse intimidation
than the familiar becoming unfamiliar.
Is this where we rode the winds, my love?
Cobbled lanes, marbled with rain
sharing steaming hot potatoes from a leaf bowl
sweets wrapped in plain butter paper
tea in clay glasses...
our lips splitting into stupid grins at claps of thunder
racing to the terrace in horrifying afterthought
to save the quilts from getting soggy
running amok rescuing pickle jars kept for sunning.
Is this the same staircase
where you stopped me at the elbow
to kiss me, your palm raw against
my audacious nipples?
In the hammock of those visions
which through sweat and tears raised us into adults,
we owned the sky, the hills, the earth.
In the soft underbelly of those days
which kneaded themselves like dough
in our moist hearts,
conquering the kingdom of life.
Here we are now
wearing Chanel and Versace,
but shrouded in ennui.
Going about earning a fancy living
sitting in plush offices
icy, every time we open our lips
The way birds in cages forget
all about the skies.
***
But A Flower
I discover it after twenty five years
pressed between the pages of a Webster dictionary
- a flower.
It looks like a famished spider now.
Dot like body, thin stamens for legs
One dimensional and papery
like the end of a relationship
Down to a rust brown
from scintillating yellow
Hurting, flaking, the faintest touch,
like a broken heart.
All the good words in the dictionary
couldn't keep it intact.
It caved in to the claustrophobia of folds
the pressure of entrapment
Resembled fauna, not flora
zoology not botany
like love, when not nourished.
And I thought,
no one would pin it to lapels
or embellish it in a bouquet
caress it with their cheeks
or swim in its fragrance
It had lost its entity.
The way things do, when left to time.
And I wished it had remained a flower...
A dead flower, but a flower.
