6. Skin
Sydney Red Gum
The tub in our shared bathroom would have
a waterline rim of grease and flakes of black skin
if he bathed before me.
Too embarrassed to complain of Nigerian habits
I scoured the bath before my daily use.
The small kitchen we students shared,
from time to time was full of gorgeous black girls,
their bubbling laughter fused
with the stink of west African fish-powder stew—
later consumed with much noise
and evident appreciation in his bedroom.
Once, lacking my own, I used the last
of his butter for my meal. In attempting
to apologize next day for my misdemeanour, I found
he would have none of it, beaming with pleasure
at the cue I had given for him to explain
I had discovered the African way,
that he should have—who needs it most.
It was as if he scratched my white skin
and underneath had found it black.
(Transnational Literature)
Many international visitors came to the mathematics department on study leave the secretary told me of one Who couldn’t start each morning without a fresh pad and new pencil ever obliging she recycled his little-used pads and Pencils to others married to an astronomer she appreciated the way so many things from love to the universe arise from nothing (Cordite)
They are here in hundreds of thousands— padlocks with names inscribed or printed bold in light-fast ink. We imagine couples pledging everlasting love as they click the lovelocks on the wire fencing of the bridge and throw the keys into the turbid waters of the Seine. A notice, vandalised, informs that one in four French households suffers from domestic violence. What effrontery to remind that love is fragile, ephemeral, a mere hair’s breadth away from hate and violence, in this—well, almost—sacred place. A winter’s day, light rain, the bridge almost deserted, we await the love-struck couples who will brave the most inclement weather to pledge themselves, without appointment, to eternal love. Meanwhile the love lock vendors brace themselves against the wind, like new age priests ready to dispense the sacraments, give blessings, smile at the ceremonial kiss. (French Literary Review)
Saying goodbye at the train on his last visit to Brisbane I remember my father fixing me with steely eyes, as if he were absorbing all detail, confirming each aspect, committing my every movement to his memory. With that stare one reserves for precious objects like parent or partner briefly seen before for ever being sealed away. Now at this same age I say goodbye to French friends I have known for half a lifetime, seen two generations pass, one colleague dying. We abandon the gentility of kissing cheeks and take to hugs, rocking back and forth, some kisses, too, for it is certain, this is the last time in this life that we will meet. Travelling alone across half the world is now for me too much a burden. And so I stand under an umbrella beside the covered market, deserted now, while they adjust their GPS, all wave, the car moves off, and I stand watching flaming taillights being slowly extinguished by the rain. Then suddenly, the realization that I wear my father’s steely stare, and I’m aware I am no longer of the exuberant age when all seems possible, but now have reached the age my options fast diminish, and darkness closes in. (Antipodes)
Frequently I pause at a regenerating patch of bushland seeded with surface soil from a not far distant forest and guess at the identity of sapling blue gums turpentines stringybarks coachwood angophoras acacias all less than a metre tall imagining the full grown trees that I will never see while nearby in his backyard Dave scissors leaves trains limbs to bonsai replicas of full grown trees imagined but will never be just as greatness may be thrust on men by circumstance the bonsai trees have smallness thrust upon them it’s why they fascinate like dwarfs in royal courts but what disturbs about the would-be-giant Ficus religiosa rooted in its inch of moss and gravel and no larger than a weed is had it reached potential it may have had a Buddha resting in its shade from the shock of his enlightenment just as remarkable the stunted wind-swept tortured forms of bonsai pines their ascetic lives spent on the calm and sunny two square metre garden bench in Dave’s backyard a creative space so strange I wonder did God feel much the same creating at his bench all living things but I dare not linger in this arboreal surgery for fear that bonsai love or madness might invade my mind so I retreat to the patch of regenerating bush relax breathe fresh air among the saplings freely stretching to the sun (Australian Poetry Anthology)
First I saw the dog then the form of a man threading its way noiselessly through the close-packed forest of gym machines I called him mate told him there were only two of us this morning watched his fingers flutter over the holes of the weight stack insert a pin before he began to use the DUAL AXIS ROW machine satisfied that he was independent and gym-trained not to stare at others I faced the wall to work the ABS CRUNCH then moved to the HIPS where lying on my side I became concerned my sudden backward flexing could cause him injury even as he fixed my location by sound I placed him by the tinkling clink to be on the OBLIQUE surprising myself there were things I knew without knowing that I knew now I was tuned to the machines’ unique metallic voices the clanks and clunks of moving weights the grinding gears the strain of cables all came to the fore of my consciousness as if we were two men moving in a dark room with only sounds to place the other under supervision by the dog a living talisman for our protection now at rest but instantly alerted by a low-waved hand signalling a move between machines apparently along a predetermined path still incomplete as I left the gym freshly aware of the scuff of shoes on concrete the diverse engine tones of cars the patter of little feet the dry scratch of a wind-blown leaf on pavement and from somewhere near the tiny cymbal crash of dropped keys (Westerly)
Enveloped tightly in food mingled with indigestible sand. Eat, the only way to move, randomly, enticed by a crack here a succulent morsel there, infinitely flexible, deflected by a stone, a fork, a spade, menacing vibrations from some other living thing, no backbone for a fight in the black back lanes of the earth. No advertising space no subterranean billboards no missiles on bitumen no beauty no ugliness no vision no ethics, for what do morals mean for a living thing, meandering at digestion pace alone, in the damp darkness, trailed by a labyrinth of excrement. Few pleasures, the massaging slip of moist clay, a tasty nematode, the frisson of meeting by chance a fellow creature, a slow glide along the parting between flesh and bone of a buried thing, recently deceased (Quadrant)