Christina Conrad
all day between whitewashed walls we beat each other with words my mother beat flies with a black rubber fly-swat people hung strips of sticky paper from the ceiling flies stuck on them
when you broke your ankle you lay in a high ceiling-ed room snakes of black hair devouring your white body black crutches crossed at the foot of your bed behind a ragged lace curtain you kept a jar of piss too small to contain the mighty flow i suggested you try a tall blue glass vase filled with black roses i became the piss emptier gliding down the long ancestral hall past death masks madonnas bicycles delicately balancing the neck of the vase hoping your friend the white sphinx would think it was full of black rose water
my father face like a polished almond black curls on his neck died before i could love him am i too thin i ask feeling the bones in my face if you get any thinner you’ll look like a concentration camp victim then I’ll have nothing to do with you
you ask what i do when you are away i lie on the couch and imitate a girl i knew who sucked her thumb while she stroked her cheek with a white rabbits tail
i too was laid on a table between a whistling kettle and an aluminum frying pan she thrust a knitting needle inside me her florid bosom lolling heaving up ten pound notes the face of captain cook drowning in her cleft
his head was too big he had had too much education the youngest son said people with big heads have a large amount of brain he said people with small heads are dumb my head was small i knew a man with a colossal head pointed as he spoke of nouns verbs adjectives he had had too much education people thought he was brilliant
in my family no one possessed large bosoms mine were small & hard later they grew from an ardent wish to possess melons they rolled on my mother’s oak table shocking her into removing bread & butter demanding to know if i was pregnant at 48 i who had given birth to so many nurturing each child to the age of 7 sorrow & guilt accumulated blowing up wickedness until she was disproportionateround flat tin
my mother never opened her door to travelling salesmen she had once opened her door to a rawleighs man he told her he had a special cleaner that would rid her of fly poo she would not let him open his voluminous bag i longed to possess a flat round tin of pink rawleighs ointment my mother said rawleighs men were rough when the hindu man pulled up outside in his van my mother leapt up his portable steps inside the van his long knife flashed as he cut open a pink watermelon his dark face his white teeth his scales shook as he weighed the heavy fruit black seeds spilledthe struggle to birth an idea
alone in the tall narrow house i was the lighthouse keeper the sea shone into my heart seals played in the shadow of night when moon fell into silver water the great trees walked down from the hills on the eve of life the sea lapped—lapped our lady of the waterfall poured her juices down her dark cleft of stone boulders – lunged tore at her feet thrown up by eruptions – desirous – her moss trembled at night i sat at a long table made from the rudder of a ship that caught fire at sea beached it lay on the shore for years until the wood was washed white the wounds and scars remained black burnt alone, i sat writing in the naked window reflected in the arms of the olive tree her olives falling hard - bitter on the ground. under a full moon the sea ran in ran out in my 47th year i sought my shadow falling from ash to ecstasy flames shooting from my head on my knees before a rose bush weeping over her thorns i painted “the struggle to birth an idea” i was called to this place to cast off the dross crystallized round the soul the apocalyptic light piercing the heart in its rickety case striking the mind in its stagnant pit – night and day i heard the howl of the world Horror and Torment screaming through my veins clashing with Logic looming in his white tower – heart and mind playing on an instrument circular in its intent ships with white sails forged through the sounds anchored in the bay from the windows of my room a pohutokawa tree stood at the edge of the sea covered in red flowers i painted for my life one look back i would fall i kept my eye fixed on the present hands blind over hidden terrain watering the rose – the secret of life journeying in faith paying a bitter toll for the price of materializing dreams – seared by light in a tomb of ignorance I wrote i am the bride of the spectre my veil – rent – besmirched in paint – blood of the soul the spectre does not have a body he uses mine groping under Life’s hood i birth dreams - paint on illusion’s shroud i am the bride of the spectre i fall into life in a lidless coffin one morning i awoke in fear my companions – Lucidity and Logic - had flown Horror and his brother Torment closely attended me i could not call for help no longer vigilant quailing in fumes of turpentine lead paint insidiously seeping into the heart cobalt blue mad lead yellow blood red azure turquoise white black black tormenting the brain multiplying heart’s tick on cliff’s edge i rode a bicycle chopped wood with a sharp axe spinning in a vortex the eye saw through everything climbing twenty stairs to my room the kowhai tree pressed against the window a blue pigeon stared on the eve of life the sea lapped lapped i must jump through seven hoops of white flame i cowered i ran to the glass house to play with cucumbers long – verdant – swelling on the vine fat lettuces rooted in dark earth i entered the doorway tripping lifting both hands as if about to be shot pictures of my life appeared in a swelling bubble on my forehead in slow motion i fell through a glass darkly slashing my wrists blood spurting hands hanging by a thread passing in a boat the caretaker of waterfall bay saw a fountain of blood a headless figure running screaming taken to hospital lying in a pool of blood in the bottom of the boat my life ebbing away i could not remember who i was flying out of my body on a long silver cord i saw myself – an empty glove I cried out "ah sweet death – take me take me" the sea was lapping lapping on the eve of life i lay for weeks watching a vine climb up a tree explode into a blood red flower from a wild donkey – braying before a closed door i became a lamb patiently chewing eyes lifted to the painted sky a man in a boat came to take me away cradling my wooden lute i climbed into the boat and the lute cried out in one long note and was silent and the sea lapped over those scars and wounds that might have opened
each night the father journeyed up the long hall to read occult literature in the smoke-filled kitchen the sons & i sat reading cruel fairy tales when the fire died down one of the sons rammed wood down the gullet of the old black stove whipping up the flame with a long crooked poker every hour one of the sons journeyed up the long hall to ask the father to come down the hall was steep viced in humps filled with watery light a narrow door windowed in blood-red glass reflected 2 old guava berry trees hung in lichen leaning across the path touching in grief’s silence fields yearned past the broken gate the father sat in the aura of a dwindling lamp his face lost in his black beard the fine lids of his eyes hooding fear the room full of sculptures a woman in a sigh of wood hands covering her face from the ceiling a stone cunt hung on a rusty chain twisted paintings bent in anguish besmirched in paint like blood heavy veils of old velvet covered the shipwrecked bed the walls boarded with kauri gasped between the cracks in snarling teeth the crossed window trembled
every two years you paint your car silver same colour as the sardine tins i coveted as a child the key always got stuck in the sardine tin you park your car outside my bedroom window you shut my bedroom window you nail paint rags across the glass my bedroom is plunged in darkness outside you rattle your spray gun the smell of turpentine pierces memory i grope in darkness i remember how i first saw you your tail of gold hair your coat of corduroy i was on heat with a proclivity for crushes you led me on hastening away at crucial point a friend, startled by my obsession with you informed my mother she said you always get crushes on men you live in a dream world this time you shall face reality outside my bedroom door your spray gun rattles
on melbourne cup day old men surge down myrtle street seduced by memory i bow before restriction study cruelty as i once studied thorns familiarity does not make anguish easier to bear each morn i rise early in the courtyard a golden crocus shoots out of dark earth i once lived near a beloved our streets ran parallel from my balcony i could see the roof of his house between a 6 foot cactus and wooden teeth i stared a solitary prisoner at night when sleep did not take me i ran in bare feet thru freshly washed streets past his house i never touched his black fence his gate his frowning window