The Best Australian Poems 2016 by Sarah Holland-Batt

Author:Sarah Holland-Batt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

Bringing It All Back Home

After Allen Ginsberg’s First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels

Hot black night thru melaleucas –

cars rest in moons of yellow

fallen from poles that hiss and burr –

and stars blaze above in navy linen.

The tops of flame trees breathe

insects that drift in the warm breeze.

And parents in the drive, tend

barbecue and smoke (acacia, gum),

pretending happiness, but their eyes belie.

Their tired son in leather jacket sweats

the cool and itches in the dark, rubbing

tobacco and weed, furtive in corners

while other leather jacketed boys smoke

dope under the front yard citreodora –

purposeful, concentrated – and way

too cool for school. I cross the lawn

and beer can litter to climb the porch steps.

Two boys in army shirts slump

at the screen door, half-hearted guards,

smoked-out, listless and benign

like domestic cats.

Their girls dance. One in scarlet tights

and long dress, sweat in her hair,

kisses an energetic boy, who leans

in to her on the lounge floor.

Her boyfriend guard doesn’t notice,

he looks across the lawn, stoned,

smiling a welcome like Buddha.

Others talk on couches, but most

move to the music – twenty of them –

to the vibration thru the floor.

They sway in the middle of the room

and bend like Vietnamese huts in wind.

I join them and lift my arms

to the new, sudden rush of sound

like war, the beat we came for.

Pounding, shrill, the music charges,

electric, we rock and shift like choppers

in a storm. A red-haired boy,

tight-jeaned, moves like Nureyev.

He smokes a roach, eyes shut.

I look at his crotch and want to marry.

Simeon Kronenberg

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