The stick arrow bounced off the screen-door
my older sister was standing behind.
I was the Indian. She was the settler.
Tearing down the steps, 
she took the bow from my hand.
Why did you do that? I asked;
it didn’t hurt you.

I looked into her face. 

The treaty was over.

Don’t you ever do anything like that 
ever ever ever ever again, she said,

and broke the bow over her knee.
Sticks and string lay at my feet.
War paint smudged.

Back at the fort, she resumed 
her chaise lounge, magazine and iced tea.
It was my first lesson.
After that, 
I always felt sorry for the Indians.
 

There is a desert in every heart 
which cannot be crossed 
for fear there is no end.  

No shade. No resting-place.

Striving to avoid darkness,
I make a slave-dance of freedom –
toeing the air midst angels.

(Is that laughter in the wings, 
or merely a semblance of weeping?)

I stumble before Death’s fiddle, 
trace footprints of Treachery.

I have found Desire tangled 
in a coverlet of night.

I am known to those who 
have gone before; 

surely, those who follow 
will not be strangers.

The dead draw nearer.
The nudge of invisibility 
breeds an idleness of years.

I camp with ghosts, 
chant endlessly of the lost – 
that ever-changing vanishing point 
beyond all ceremonies of hope.

I wonder if you remember,
like I do,
the dog you killed that day
we came back from the Stony Rises.

You were driving, talking about
yourself, I think, 
or maybe it was some song on the radio.

Up ahead, a boy on a bicycle
pedaled into the wind, dog
by his side. 

It happened so quickly, 
you nearly didn’t stop, 
thinking, 
hoping, 
that you’d only imagined it.

When we backed up the boy was
on his knees, hands hovering over
the dead animal.

Sorry about that, mate.

Fighting back tears and disbelief
the boy looked up:

Oh, that’s all right, he said.
 

The tablecloth is not your enemy.
There is no need to be afraid.
The way it canopies out and floats to earth
is perfectly harmless.
The fork will answer most of your questions.
Raising the knife above the chest is ill-bred.
More butter and less vehemence.
Do not take more that you can chew.
Those who betray themselves do so
when the mouth is open.
Tomato sauce is revelation.
The spoon is mystical.
Dessert is utterly blameless.
To see one’s face in the plate
is no disgrace 
so long as everyone is fed.
Sit up straight.
No elbows.
Those who are tired will be sent to bed.
It is all quite natural:
the enu, the salt,
the paper napkins rising
to meet their chins,
the knife held so...


 

Kerouac
                 ain’t been
                                through here
           in more than
                                thirty years
& won’t be 
                 again
                                for all eternity 




  

Half-asleep, 
I fall 
in & out 
of your flesh,
giving birth 
to Memory,
the sound
of loss, an
awkward moan 
dignified by 
weeping

How many 
times have I 
knocked on 
your door,
thrown back 
sheets 
so that 
the sun 
might rise?  

Genealogy 
is a compli-
cated 
sentence;

one 
may as well
look for 
inheritance
in a 
fingernail of 
moon.  

Running 
towards your 
shadow,
believing it 
will save me,

I lope 
through 
the 
long grass,

towards that 
stone wall 
where 

once
I'm sure

I was naked 
in 
chains.

Their genus is insatiable: Labroides dimitiatus.
They feed in schools.
Working close to the gills,
scavenging food from the mouths of other fishes.
The females follow the male. 
They go where he goes.
Resistance is out of the question.
Freedom isn't in the vocabulary.
There is no thought of subverting his authority.
No alliance against this ancient 
single-mindedness.

Instead,

the females form a pecking order under him.
When the male dies, 
the alpha female takes his place.
The cells of her flesh revolt.
The bony sockets in her skull 
are too small for the eyes.
She grows larger, 
acquires male organs...
mysteriously,
another 
female 
arrives.

The rug was pink.
The curtains were pink.
Pillowcases, pink.

"We never go 
anywhere," 
she said.

It was the old sore.
All the places he'd been
Cos of the war.
And she could never go;
though once or twice 
she said she wouldn’t mind,
maybe,
driving down to Mexico.

The shades were pink.
The scales were pink.
The wheel swung 
further every week.
Tomato soup was all she ate

until that night
when the lampshades 
didn’t work
and all the 
decorations 
stopped.

Watching her
cough up 
blood 
in the pink 
pink room.

That night, in Reynosa,
over the border,
the sign said "La Cucaracha".
We dined on little sausages;
ate sourdough bread.
I was ten-years-old.
I danced with my mother
while my father 
sat at the table
twiddling the horns 
of a plaster bull.

th lady grocer in th fruit shop
on Parramatta Road -
                    population: 80,000 cars;
halfa million irradiated eyes;
cacophony of 
           buses, 
                  trucks, 
               coughing,
         sirens, pounding
                    44-gallon drums,
           Rock’n’rubber / 
                         HONK!
   Walk’n’Don’t Walk 
           people

                  past 
       clanging 
   shopfront windows
                     under jets
                     unzippering  
                     th sky -

assures me:

        "They’re farm-fresh eggs."

It is what we do
We cannot stop
There is nothing else
We have the right
We will not be contradicted
Our faith is unshakeable
When things don’t fit
We are afraid
We seek our box
Crouching 
Holding up small pieces
Of ourselves 
Against the light
We have committed 
Everything to
Memory
So nothing will be lost
So nothing 
Can be found

She disappeared in
	      late December,
    same night 
  	  we put up the tree.

No photographs. 
No proof of leaving;

Mere space 
    enclosed by empty fact: 

          everyone is gonna to die
          is not discussed.
    
Instead,
    the poem by Brecht :

	  the unwed mother
     an abandoned bed
   an infant murdered 
in a silent shed.

Marie Farrar, 
born in April...

I have loved you badly.
I am stubborn.
I am a slow learner.
I am afraid.

Would that I be as
good as my mother,

who found such 
courage
in your travail,
holding hands
sitting together, 
          all that long 
              last 
                winter
night...
 
   same night 
   we put up the tree.
 

We were another species -
the way they peered at us. 
A river of red-blooded 
American boys, wandering 
the corridors in our underwear.
It could’ve been a game
only there was nowhere to hide.

Everyone had a theory 
on how to be rejected. 
"79" had migraines;
"43": "a family history".
"125", flat feet.
They were only taking the ones
healthy enough to die.

"I’m takin' my ass to Canada,"  
a college boy said. 

"Where’s Canada?" 
a black guy replied.

I had to laugh - 
you,  telling me about 
those houses for sale 
on the hill 
overlooking the harbour, 
Big, plate-glass windows 
facing the water; 
&
all of them 
with curtains.

Standing there, 
over the tub -
speaking 
of  blocked views -
your naked snatch 
in the corner 
of my eye,
running your bath.

"You call what you do work?
That’s not work.
Try running up & down 15 steps
maybe two, three hundred times a day,
waiting tables.
Now that’s work," she said.
"What’d you do today?"

     "I wrote a poem.
     About jogging."

"You hate jogging," she said.

     "Yeah, I know," I said.
     "It’s about why I don’t jog."

"That’s easy," she said.
"You don’t jog because you’re lazy.
How many joggers do you know?"

     "I’ve watched them," I said.
     "They’re everywhere."

"Some research. 
Is that as close as you get?"

     "Close enough," I said. "It was exhausting.
     I lost a coupla kilos thinking about it."

"You’re full of shit."

     "Maybe," I said, 
     "but have you ever noticed?"

"Noticed what?"

     "The fear.
     They’re not running for nothing.
     You can see it in the eyes.
     It’s almost desperate.
     Now, take someone like Mr Mislimov..."

"You think too much," she said.
"A little exercise would do you good."

     "All right, all right," I said.
     "But I’ll take mine walking."

She didn’t have time to discuss it.
She was running late for her squash lesson.

I didn’t get to tell her about
Mr Mislimov.
He lived to be 166.
The secret of his success was:
     "What’s the hurry?"
And he only had one rule:

"Don’t eat unless you’re hungry."

Copyright © 2000
Billy Marshall Stoneking


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