Heathcliff
we know where to find the black tips / exquisite / of a soft tearaway / of what flew / and sang /
we know the other is / best heard / in atmospheres / of howling
he does not speak / he only speaks / to curse / and how / she loves him for it / ef
her brother his blue eyes are lash his horses suffer / ef the adults / ef the rich the
pile of everything they've ever eaten / higher than hit / the centre wet / we are
only twelve / we are thirteen / ef what they can't taste / I would not eat / can go for
days / I would fight / he does / he would bury her
she touches her tongue to where they have lathed him open / with strokes / with speaking / this
is why the silence / all all quiet at the rocks’ overlook the rocks’
beginning / she blinks / she tears at her own hangnails unthinkingly she blooms
/ what is this / a day arrives / she is all bloomed out / and taken /
and she leaves / all our digging / he says / we dug the unsanctioned world for no one else we
owned that black that biting feather-wind / for what / his tongue a rock / in the closed
throat / god of whistle freeze / of burr / don't look / now / my god / it won't /
stop closing
Traces
The gift of the woman is that she comes from a series of alcove
fires
in a tangle of flowering. The gift of the man is that
he knows
where he comes from. The mistake of the man is that he
thinks he knows.
When I dipped my arms in source colour and dragged them down the wall
how clear
I was being. Here are the handprints of the woman as she presses
and folds
her body to the ground. Here is the time it takes for the chicken
to stop
its live signalling and know where it comes from. Hands, feet, fire, colour,
vision,
shape, chicken, film. It takes a length of struggle for the wings to stop their beating
once the head is gone.
Here are the traces of the woman who scooped out the shape of her body
then rose
and took photographs. After I went out the window the women I had needed in life asked
Where is Ana Mendieta?
One man thought he knew what he had heard me say which was
no
no no no no. The truth is, the mistake of the man is that he disassembles materiality
storey by storey.
The gift of the man is that he tallies his bricks and pushes the source
away.
In life I flamed and scratched and I wore the taunting mask when we drank and
the truth
is I loved him. He was larger than me and what he made on the gallery floors
cast all
kinds of shadows. But I was very clear. I dug my heels in and no one knows how
quickly I went
out the window. After we made love I covered his face. I covered his face
with my hands.
Over, here
Your boyfriend humps the room with his jokes he is a skilled
belittler you look bored or else I am dreaming
wilting over here with the chips in their salty
bowl
your status is excruciatingly prepositional you are with
your boyfriend you are behind your boyfriend you are to the left of your boyfriend you
charge the room my hands are static
a TV show about space tuned one channel too far or not far enough
and I am fiddling the stereo to lamentations
with a beat, I do not want to kill the party I want to make my hungering aural while you
eat a carrot stick
a beer in your other hand, crunch crunch
and suddenly you are next to me the low ceiling hung with globes of vaguely Chinese
lanterns somehow contains you
but I have swallowed a Pluto of wrongness not even a planet anymore
and I start narrativising my afternoon of parking meters so I went to hunt a dollar down?
and when I got back someone had gifted me their windshield slip it still had time on it people
are actually good I think mostly you know
on the inside
(I actually say this) oh what space junk comes out of my
mouth asteroids of fool play it cool I can't
ever you
are good on the inside all gold leaf and good water frozen in moon–rocks and
starship enterprise charters noble in their interplanetary peace intentions I can tell just by
watching you walk
(this, however I do not say)
Joan Fleming
Joan Fleming's second book, Failed Love Poems, is due out in August with VUP. She mostly lives in Melbourne.