PS Cottier

The compleat cake

1.  Acland Street, Victoria, 1980s

Licking the windows, the cake-shop windows, with their peppermint swirls of galaxies, their new-born stars of strawberry creme; their slices of half-forgotten history lingering on the mind’s tongue.  See that poppy seed twist, curled like a strand of DNA? Is it a memory of a 1960s dance, sister of the hula-hoop, or does the warming bite of the seeds take us back past wars to an older Europe, wrapped snug in coats against a so-long winter coming in?  My mouth’s history stretched to pink-jammy-rolls and vanilla slices, sunny and seemingly vacant, or simply stuffed with more white.  Here I first tasted a sweet warmed with a spicy aftertaste, and sensed that sadness and joy often walk hand in hand, supporting each other like an elderly couple, out for a weekend stroll.  My tram-caught Newfoundland, my Acland Street, where abundance somehow whispered of loss to my thought-shy ears.  Past the strawberry tarts, open and brazen, calling for business; past the rum baba that tingled like a taste-bell for the dead; past the endless tales of one thousand and one cakes; I rumbled, ate, and paused.

PS Cottier

This is the first section of a three part prose poem first published in a wee collection called “Selection criteria for death”. This was part of Issue Three of Triptych Poets, published by Blemish Books, who sadly, are no longer in business. The other sections of this poem are 2. Politician’s birthday cake, Florida, 1965 and 3. Royal Easter Show, Sydney 2011. I may post them over the next little while. I think I chose the archaic ‘compleat’ as I’d just seen a copy of The Compleat Angler, by Izaak Walton, but I really can’t remember back thirteen years or so! (That’s when I wrote the poem, which refers back to the 1980s.) Acland Street is in St Kilda, Melbourne, for those who have never visited.

The other poets in the collection were J.C. Inman and Joan Kerr. And once again, the illustration was found in Old Book Illustrations, and is by Leonard Leslie Brooke.