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
Initially NO
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.
Stu Hatton
outrovert
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
*
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
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
k?
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
in
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
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
register.
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)
in the development of an insect)
You will wear several skins
and outgrow all of them.
and outgrow all of them.
So leave them behind you
like plastic wrappers,
or human dresses
discarded in the rain.
like plastic wrappers,
or human dresses
discarded in the rain.
Feel the relief
of each release,
the freedom
to expand again.
of each release,
the freedom
to expand again.
Wanderer
Curious light-footed
creatures of the sky,
creatures of the sky,
in a journey
of generations
of generations
everyone knows the way:
south ahead of the first frost,
south ahead of the first frost,
wait,
then wheel north again.
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.
to reproduction. You must
live long enough to do it.
Your colours –
for all their allure
are merely
for all their allure
are merely
a camouflage, a warning,
a way to impress.
a way to impress.
We might migrate
or even sleep long and still
like icicles
through winter frost
or even sleep long and still
like icicles
through winter frost
but once mated
not one of us will live
to see our young.
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
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