Tuesday poem: Vista
July 20, 2018
Vista
Icarus was detected, soaring over
our skies, a blush of pink cloud,
without string or anchor, sans permit.
We deployed the net squad, caged him
in a convenient place up north.
He pined, seedy as a sick canary,
pleading and rattling and moulting.
Eventually, his heart broke like a promise.
Then we let him in,
just before it fluttered its last.
The man-flamingo had a lot to tell us,
and science has legitimate needs.
PS Cottier
This poem was originally written as an entry for an ekphrastic poetry competition (not the image I include above) but I forgot to enter. As I was going to Japan, I forgive this errant dickheadedness, and the poem stands on its own, I think.
***
I am not one to pretend to know Japan because they spent 11 days there. But one thing I did learn is that Japanese mascots are far cooler than ours. Melon Kuma from Hokkaido is, as the name suggests, half melon, half bear, and given to biting the heads off other mascots (at least). I’ll leave you to google him, if you dare…Or here’s his Facebook page.
French police cut soles off migrant children’s shoes
And some would say
the illegality would be to the property,
the abused ownership of the shoes,
not the feet, blistered by hope,
the minds, yearning; the law’s barriers
are clear, clear as any fence.
Dubbed illegal, shoes truncated,
the children are sent back on trains.
Sole-less shoes are the new sans culottes,
as the French police cut the fashion.
And we, smug, tut-tut, and lock
the lame and the pregnant off-shore.
We cut the map, turn the sea into walls.
We are surgeons of souls, and watch,
as young men take the final step
and launch themselves, shoeless,
into another world, with hidden knife,
or rope, knot, and quick-flipped chair.
PS Cottier
The poem’s title derives from a headline in The Guardian, 15-6-18, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/14/french-border-police-accused-of-cutting-soles-off-migrant-childrens-shoes
Normally I’d be posting a football poem at the moment, however this piece in The Guardian engendered a poem admittedly about feet, but most definitely not about the beautiful game.
Tuesday poem: Burning the donkey
December 19, 2017
This one is a Christmas poem, just published at Verity La.
The poem is about reugees. It’s important to remember those excluded and shunned all year, but it’s particularly pertinent to Christmas, when God took on the form of a child born in a stable. The outsider became the centre of the story.
There’s another poem at the site about climate change and specifically, the Great Barrier Reef. An enormous number of future refugees will be fleeing the effects of climate change. And destroying the lives of other species is inexcusable, too.
God bless us, every one! Have a wonderful Christmas.
Tuesday poem: First in a long series of nasty little poems
April 12, 2016
She would surely
free the refugees —
but mostly those
with nice table manners.
P.S. Cottier
Based on overhearing a conversation at a café about how ‘we’ could take in more refugees if only they would ‘assimilate into mainstream society’. I said nothing, but write this in true esprit de l’escalier. It’s almost an aphorism, rather than a poem, isn’t it?
Tuesday poem: The ones wearing suits
August 17, 2015
The ones wearing suits
are the only ones with polished shoes catching wedged glimpses of the blue eye sky. Their ties are well knotted and the women’s hair constrained like ostrich eggs on their heads. We slouch by, wearing jeans, wearing ironic slogans like brands. We are comfortable enough to slob; comfortable enough to break traffic laws. We sip our coffees and flick through sullen mags; our thumbs fidget only on phones. We complain if we wait too long, and swear at meters mouthing our change like madeleines.
The ones wearing suits wait for the piece of paper from the ones behind that other counter (yes, those other ones sometimes wear suits, but beige and grudgingly). Ah that I could unknot those papers! I say nobly to myself, as I sip my expresso, and watch those queuing, watch those forming a border around the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Framing my coffee with their neat ties of anxiety, their perfect, uneasily bunched hair.
P.S. Cottier
That prose poem was first published in Awkword Paper Cut (US) last year as part of an essay I wrote about writing, the Australian flag, nationalism and immigration, called ‘Mild flapping’.
I remembered it yesterday, as I was flipping through a Real Paper Paper, and came across an advertisement for a senior position at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. It is obviously in the HR area, but the title given to the position is ‘Head of People Division’. I read that as the person responsible for drawing a line between those of us lucky enough to be in Australia, and those trying to make it here. People Division with the Border as the vinculum. Call me silly!
The poem above describes Lonsdale Street in Braddon, Canberra, where people on visas of various sorts in Australia go to a branch of the Department, often, it seems, trying to have their stay extended or made permanent. A couple of doors up is one of my favourite cafés, where those of us with citizenship sip our drinks and write poems.
And of course, there are the people we can’t see, locked up elsewhere.
***
I used to do a bit of book reviewing in The Canberra Times. Indeed, I once won $200 of wine in the ACT Writers Centre Awards for a book review, which was damned useful. My reviewing seems to be taking off again. Here is a link to a review of a book about ageing by Rudi Westendorp which was published recently. (Sydney Morning Herald site.)
Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
PS Cottier 