Sunday, December 30, 2012

Volume 1, No. 1, Summer 2013

LEAVES LITERARY JOURNAL

Volume 1, No. 1, Summer 2013

Contributors

Initially NO
Stu Hatton
Matt Heatherington
Anna Ryan-Punch
Bronwen Manger
Hoa Pham
Bronwyn Lovell
Paul Fearne

Time before language

Memories of when

I was in a pram

Being pushed along

Pathways that had

That signature

Which doesn’t articulate

Any more than I was

Able to say words

Back then, while in the pram

Being pushed down

Past sign posts

That haven’t changed

For over thirty years.

Something about them

Has remained

And I am spell bound

Looking at a time

Before words

Were something to me

Within the babble

Of various noises.

Something says that I

Once lived at this place

But I can’t say

What that is.

Maybe the curving paths,

Maybe the type of trees,

Maybe the atmosphere,

Maybe the earth’s beat;

But I can’t say

Exactly what that is

Except in gibberish.

Dr Seuss memories…

My Dad reading

The same old pages

Of rhyming and rhyming

Words and pictures

That sent us sleeping.

The endless repetitions!

He must’ve found it boring,

When we would ask again

For the same old book

For him to read us

Well then, he’d say, okay then

And take a look

And never make a fuss.

Pianoforte

It is said piano is a percussion instrument,

As inside the hammer hit the strings…

My memories of pianos are of when young I

Spent a year playing the same piece

Of music for my perfectionist piano teacher

In order to enter competitions and win.

I didn’t have perfect pitch

Like my brother, who played Percy Granger’s

‘Gollywog’s cake walk,’ without fear

He was making raciest music.

I would perdure the peregrination

From one town to another

In search of competitions where

My brother, the prodigy, would perform.

I would also play piano there

And practice per diem, but not ad nausium.

My persistence on the piano keys didn’t pay off

Though. I was more into painting.

I once saw a painted piano

And my mother remarked, ‘How awful,

That paint would ruin the piano’s tone.’

I thought how, instead of plain pink,

I would paint pixies playing other instruments

In a perfume of pigments,

Making the piano less perfunctory.

There was a lot I didn’t see

That was hidden percolating silently

For those who could periscope

The deep waters and unpick the poetry

Of the stave of notes, signs, signatures and lines

Put down by pain-staking composers of the pianoforte.

there is much to keep silent about   

*  

that serial mic-in-mouth dream:   

hardbodies mass,  

your book-smarts 
amount to nothing  

*  

the morning mopes,  

hardly good smoking weather  

*  

a status bar worms 
cross-screen  
to little purpose   

*  

timepoor breakfast 
eaten off a mirror  

*   

fast-acting cap 
slows the room  
to baseline  

*  

you practise your dice-rolls

but there’s no  
need to undress 
that billboard girl   

(she only ever loves a warrior) 

self-help

a nest is a gathering (opportunity point)

less an escape than a hiding (hiding centres the body)

a morning for lingering (no one is waiting)

pushing the bike uphill (no, the day not in shreds)

reversing that wheel, the eye (stir a little p.m. into the a.m.)

as if you could open anything, seed anything (the xanax beginning to sprout)

how to differ (trembling to the point of weightlessness)

limiting yourself to a certain era (ease outward: other rooms)

to act a tad skylike (become a believer in birds)

orchid dormant (how to make a robe of it?)

inertia’s home (or a buddha, a noon point)

fractalina

Ants crawl the beach, distributing

data. Sand drifts into patterns:

ripples, cusps. Sand-waves, sea-

dunes. The vast. Sun surging

amber/violet. Scapes of cloud,

smudging, shaping analogues

of lifeforms. Fractals of

your face … your circuitries.

Chemical morning: sleep-

deprived, I rest in

your pulse; vistas scroll

over your skin. These layers

and layers. Imagined

and after-image: busy mandalas

bend the spectrum. No linearities,

no wrestling with a cloud. Letting

go into patterning. Footprints on

sand … or footprints of sand … ?

Matt Hetherington

smsisms

srry wll b late bout

45 u cool w that

no u no how it

is smtmes am jus v

busy

chnge of plans cn we

do 2moro wll txt u

hey rite now its th

best i cn do all

i cn say is hey

jus go til all yr

eyes c is pixels x

Quiet

morning

light

still

after

you

went

before

true

night

The Tomb of Edgar Poe

As to Himself at last eternity changes him,

The Poet incites with a naked sword

His age aghast at never having heard

That death had triumphed in this strange voice!

They, as the vile hydra once recoiled to hear the angel

Give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe

Proclaimed most loudly the fateful spell imbibed

In the humourless flood of some darkened brew.

From hostile soil and cloud, O grief!

If our idea cannot carve a bas-relief

For the resplendent tomb of Poe to be adorned,

Calm block fallen here below from some obscure disaster,

May this granite at least forever mark a bourne

To the dark flights of Blasphemy scattered in the future.

Stephane Mallarme, trans. Matt Hetherington

Anna Ryan-Punch

Escaped

Last time she was safe

a neat-fronted doll’s house

dragged tears past wet gravel

to whipped-up playground sobs

spread out a coat; sat under the slide

blared out of her head with

wine and iron melody

three

hours

later

she

opened

her

eyes

When she walked past
pretended she was a sister

come to visit. Then stopped.

Hunched in bus shelter

away from sunburn

stink of shit and bad plans

It’s a long wait home

forget the hours active

in scrawl and slump

keep the iPhone photo:

chipped out greys, blue

wooden calves walk

hours and hours and hours

Habit

Breathe through my mouth for weeks

Cutting off one sense too many

I draw the smell back into a grey

faecal fug. Predictively habit-forming

This chopping back wires into the world

No one lands in hospital

I prefer to disappear, block off nostrils

with the back of my tongue

My jawline alters a snip

You wouldn’t notice.

I smile as air whistles

through my teeth.

Punch drunk

I believe I need a fine feathered idea

almost no one has massive plans for coping.

You’re the second window I’ve kicked in

locked away in a toilet cubicle.

Eight years in a fortnight of therapy

is not enough to extinguish the rumpus.

If I’m lost, or I’m forgiven

I’m sorry. I beat up the bathroom.

At the sisters’ house I shattered

spun handles from green vacancy to red.

I felt like he was me, in his loudest voice.

Bronwen Manger

Bronwen Manger is a poet from the outer east of Melbourne. She has performed her work on television and radio, and her poems have appeared in journals, zines, anthologies and The Age newspaper. When Bronwen is not writing, she attends poetry readings around Melbourne and works as a research assistant.

The Scream

Tonight we poise & pace

into some offhand orange dayfall,

take the air & every war

is truced now lest one distant gun

outdraw our footsteps or the hush

of wind on bay. Dear, we are

acquitted from the thwarted roil

of all before this pier. This jury

finds us glorious, all

side-by-side without a wince

of doubt to twang the seagulls’

songs to mockery. Dear, this

blotted earth is beauty yet,

is Eden still. The fraught tumult

of yesterday flutters from

our calendar as the hills

& shore wash into darkness,

landscaped peace like picture stone.

Dearest speak, tell me

how the water clasps

the light beyond its daily term;

& which vaunted feet have sung

their story ‘cross these

wooden keys before. Tell me

where we’ll wake ensconced

as morning ribbons through

our panes. And Dearest

who is that screaming behind us?

How I Sold My Soul

It was not some lamé devil’s incendiary ballpoint; nor

the oilslick eyes of any quintessential executive. Death

did not unfurl immortality for me in a rickety burlesque.

Neither genies spilling from streetlights nor fairies

sweeping back their leaf-litter coats did it.

There was no parchment, no

scales, no star-keyed

cosmic cash

No.

It was the

beach, mostly. The

sun swaying through the

shallows; bright wind in its salt

finery; hopscotch with driftwood, a hundred

thousand shells in colours to confound paint.

Yes, it was that old hijacked wrung muse the beach

that did it – and how to get back there. My sold soul I

carry with me now, laid-away, waiting. And a pocket

full of sand, spilling graciously and interminably.

Four Mississippis

I held you for

four Mississippis

when we last said goodnight.

You were brighter than

all the lights of the city

as you slipped from my sight.

I was washed away

by those four Mississippis;

I was carried out to sea.

Now writing this

lonely little ditty

couldn’t express what you mean to me.

I want to hold you for

more Mississippis;

hold you for

more than a while.

I want to hold you for

four hundred Mississippis,

twenty Ganges,

ten Euphrates,

and the Nile.

Hoa Pham

Berlin Poems

Peace Walk Berlin October 2009

Stepping on the bronze plaques of history

Haunting concrete slabs of those who had gone before

Stillness ebbs and flows.

Holocaust Memorial

Rectangular sentinels of the dead

Play hide and seek in visions

With gaps in memory

Quick disappearances.

Kreuzberg

Plain black type on white

Protests against immigration

In a neighbourhood full of darker friendlier faces

Lounging on tables with coffee and cigarettes.

Bronwyn Lovell

Instars

(the phases between molting
in the development of an insect)

You will wear several skins
and outgrow all of them.

You’ll sense the pull of
tightness before

the fabric splits.

So leave them behind you
like plastic wrappers,
or human dresses
discarded in the rain.

Feel the relief
of each release,
the freedom
to expand again.

Wanderer

Curious light-footed
creatures of the sky,

in a journey
of generations

everyone knows the way:
south ahead of the first frost,

wait,
then wheel north again.

Your antennae: one magnetic compass
guiding you back to the same trees

your great-great-grandparents knew
or, if the winds are right, you could

escape tradition: fly somewhere

entirely new.

Pairing

Like everything, it comes back
to reproduction. You must
live long enough to do it.

Your colours –
for all their allure
are merely

a camouflage, a warning,
a way to impress.

We might migrate

or even sleep long and still
like icicles
through winter frost

but once mated
not one of us will live
to see our young.

Paul Fearne

There are things which should not be said

there are things which should not be said

there are times which should only be put aside

and when we are through with them

we will come again

in a new form

and a new chance

at what the stars

have only ever felt

Never found again

a river that flows with the trappings of time

an eclipse of the sun that drips the dreams of tomorrow

in the middle of a lake of mist

the echoed silence of times forgotten

sing with the breath of what may have been

hold me close

for in the morning

the vines that cover this antique cabinet

will forgive the dust that marks the passing of each day

what is here now

is a forgery of hoped for lullabies

that will guide these reckless autumn leaves

to a place

that will never be found again

The ghosts of moonlight shadows

An ancient tomb

that cradles a home for butterflies

it breathes

as the light of centuries

washes over its dust

footprints lead from its entrance

they are left by the ghosts of moonlight shadows

as they dance through the porticoes

wheeling and diving

like the embers of a forgotten fire

that once lit the world

but now

only dream of silence

and the frayed tapestries of twilight

Leaves Literary Journal