deep south 2013
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dsj poetry
Start,
There was no sunset. At 8pm the light went out. Hot in the outside dark. On long tables I kept telling beautiful women they were beautiful in the shadows and the shadows kept falling away. His spine was a slack rope. His arms sturdy over the handlebars. I love that man who tells the story without saying any words. We burn open the padlock of a tent. We go to Tallows Beach and I write how the waves are like torn paper. A Swedish boy with an infatuation follows us; he asks me to untangle his hair. We fell in the ocean with our breasts first and thought the moon was fire on the horizon. There was a large metal fence that was a cage but he looked larger. Get me out of here. I shaved turning meat and swilled red wine like oil in a paper cup. I'd never read a long poem to a stranger while walking in a strange town. You had to cross the railway lines to get anywhere. My book caught in a storm and pages tongued together. We cooked sausages on a drain cover and followed the sun up the cliff. We kissed. I ran. The water took away unneeded body space. I watched it spill all golden and my dress, leaf litter in his hands. I was thinking about making a kiln. I was lying on sand and watching the hail come down in ice cubes. You could always jump in. He told about the head-hunters and the active volcano. He smashed macadamia nuts on the ground with a rock. I was on the phone to a friend who said, you always do this, and to my mother who said, why do you always do this. Then three little throat-cut piglets outside a hut. The forest built of sound. The estuary grass scratched and driftwood sculptures on the mud. The red laser target on his forehead. Everyone was aghast. I was speaking about my brother so much I didn't notice he was down in the sand and coral staring at my hand. We ate nasi campur in greaseproof paper and drank beer from big bottles. I cried because the peeling multi-coloured hut had been in a dream. The children ran yelling, mister, where are you going? Their voices dissolved in the heat off the lagoon. He swam over a shark towards me while three men came from the bush. We dived and named the starfish on the bottom, Marta, Harold, Inconstantia III. His breath was a constellation around him. His falling arms. In the church I give him sunflowers my mother has grown. They talk about the two trees that lean together and tangle their branches. But the river that runs between them. We think about the river but it is saltwater. Photographs. He touches me everywhere. I hang this poem on the branch and walk back to the van wet. He takes it down. And there. & there.
Loveday Why is studying for a PhD in contemporary poetics at the University of Otago and co-runs Wildwood Ecoforestry, a native regeneration business. She has had work published in journals in the UK, New Zealand and online. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2008 and her chapbook, Chillida and the Sound, was published by The Gumtree Press in 2012.
