Ghost Bear

On flying ant day, Elliot took me to the glowing sign

outside Kenneth Williams’ apartment. We stared at it

for the necessary long while. Kenneth Williams

said he hated everyone and everything, especially, but especially

Peter Pan. He died on April 15, 1988. The day before that

he wrote in his diary ‘Oh –

what’s the bloody point?’

*

In my town people would sometimes lie down

on the railway tracks, because that

was a good joke

*

One of Elliot’s friends had a terrible argument with his elderly father

who had to move into a home, and later said to Elliot: ‘It’s a necessary part

of the ritual, a bit like them Peruvian drug ordeals, where you go

into the forest and get attacked by a ghost bear

with a skull for a head that represents your inner child: horrible

but how can you be sure your love is strong

enough unless you’ve tested it against a ghost

bear with a skull head?’

*

Elliot paused to extract a flying ant from my ear

as a smiling panhandler visited us, holding his hat over his thighs

as if about to sing, when the ants were visited upon him

*

a boy in my class climbed up on an overhead bridge

and was electrocuted

but he lived, and a few months later

scored a try on the rugby field

and a boy standing beside me said ‘He’s just showing off

because he got electrocuted’

*

a family man once asked me ‘Do you think of me as your teacher

or as a friend’ and with the skull head of a bear

leaned in to kiss me, as per the necessary

part of the ritual

*

When there are two frail old women together, there is always one

who is visibly stronger.

I have an old friend and I think about whether we will be old together

and which of us will be stronger, holding up the other

which of us the wind will push over first

for a good joke

*

Two years after flying ant day Elliot stood on the basement steps

of his great grandmother’s house in Bramley Fall Woods

and there was no house left, only the steps, hidden under cold leaves

going up and up into the forest

Electrolarynx

My mother and father and I had been lost in the casino

in Reno for a long time now

so had taken to riding an elevator

between floors, between the neon stars

of slot machines, of American loss

when we were joined by a man with a hole

in his neck: an American, clearly, because

he held a cane tenderly, and because his body

resembled a set of golf clubs in a suit and because

I was not afraid until he tilted his leather face at us

and unzipped his eyes; or until the dark nest

in his neck began moving; or until his hands

slid from his cuffs and held his own throat

and a voice buzzed inside him. Then I was afraid

then our silence made a condemned building

of us all. A tremor went through my father’s flying hat

which he wore for he wished others to know

we were here for the air show.

We had been lost for a long time now

in the casino in Reno and there was not a one

of us who might assist this throatless man

for we were too busy taking the prize of him home:

in America are humans who have dark matter

inside them, who run on batteries, who speak

with the voice of Death’s personal computer. All down the years

I heard my father shouting ‘I’ve never heard anything like it’;

he was doing the voice, all down the years

the voice of the elderly gentleman who also

was lost in a casino in Reno.

Happy New Year

On most drives I like quiet because my mother

had a habit of appraising the changing scenes

calling ordinary things, especially paddocks, lovely

but on our drive home the evening is unusually lovely

and this pressures one or the other of us to remark on it

by way of maintenance, like parrots preening each other

or when I couldn’t use my hands and you spoonfed me

instead we continue, the asphalt as smooth

as a sheet of cartridge paper on which the car

is lightly drawn and erased

the words I pass over belong to another script

we are at the part of the bay that is barely lit

the sky is in the process of scanning a photograph

a bar in the process of chairs going up on the tables

jars drifting in warm water and labels

our fairylights from London, reversing into its wheel

tomorrow we will ride our bikes back down here

one of us riding in front of the other

probably me in front, with my higher gears

and the security fence with tatters of PEACE woven into it

will bolt past, and Happy Valley will pull up

with its mouth hooked, sky streaming as it rushes

and I will let this happen without calling back to you

Ashleigh Young

Ashleigh Young works as an editor. Some of her recent writing has appeared in The Griffith Review, Five Dials and Sport. She blogs at eyelashroaming.com. She is a supporter of the Island Bay Cycle Way.