Snake Like Charms

Brown Snake, North Lake

Somewhere close, the part

secret of two naughty boys

in gumboots standing on small

tiger snakes’ heads

If you hadn’t shouted

Stop, I wouldn’t have

This one was huge and brown

almost three metres long, slick

umber body languid across the path

As my eyes measured the extent

from visible to obscured, her body

hooked back on itself, arcing

sharply to rise above a shrub

Head, still as stone, tongue

tickling air. A question raised

at my daughter’s fleshy thigh

clamped hard around my waist.

My slackened state shot through

again. Frozen before another

mother, willing my burden to be

still. Then, a place behind my ribs

which might conduct a hush

But more, the wild impossibility

of stepping away







SAVE BEELIAR WETLANDS














.

Snake Like Charms

Snake Skin, Roe Swamp

Shedding skin of a snake, will

loosen first at the lips, retract

backward over bluing eyes

dull crown, those sorcerous jaws

Resistance is needed, seeking

friction of rock, chafe of grass

scour and scrub of brown balga

It braces its body and slides out

Slipped fishnet of bubblewrap

mingled with a streaky mandala

of divested paperbark, becomes

my discovery, being its past

I tease open a brittle end, puzzle

my arm inside, until it is sheathed

to the elbow, ghost eyes puckering

my skin. My pulse its unsealed centre

Vestiture of rain spittle in my hair

A cool trickle slides inside my collar

I tear the delicate mesh pulling it off

in what becomes a deluge

God of fragmentation, refusing

to keep things whole, coming

to me later. Showing again

that repetition might simply be

a lack of attention to detail








SAVE BEELIAR WETLANDS













.

Darwin's Orchid & Orchid Poems the chapbook

Darwin's Orchid

Single molecule
of moth pheromone
invisible in the immense
freight of pollen blown
over the desert

how halves relate
their common weight
papilionate













~

The chapbook is out now and fabulous through mulla mulla press; click here ->Orchid Poems

~

Amanda Joy’s ability to locate the marvellous
within common ground, and her ear for just
the right cadence imbues her work with
gorgeous music. These orchid poems are
testament to her enduring gifts.


~Anthony Lawrence

Amanda Joy's new book is a series of fine
poems, the concept is delightful and smart,
each poem draws energy from a particular
type of orchid; as one turns the pages, the
static electricity between form and flower
crackles and flows from the act of reading.
These poems are as intriguing as their
subjects, delicate survivors, traced by a poet
alive with the wonder of her vision.


~Robert Adamson

We are travellers in this enchanted world of
orchidry, where poems are tropisms, leading
us through the chambers of desire. Joy’s
exquisite book of orchid poems coaxes an
inner experience from a masculine plant — a
feminine voice which transmits into
reverberating words: fractured propinquity,
charged botany, and interior voyages of the
mind.


~Claire Potter








AND... if you're in Queensland, or feel like a trip to Queensland, I'm very excited to be reading at the Queensland Poetry Festival along with some amazing poets..like.....

Sandra Thibodeaux / Sawako Nakayasu / Jacob Polley / Zenobia Frost / Kate Fagan / Helen Avery / Paul Sherman / Ross Clark / Julie Beveridge / Ashley Capes / John Koenig / Carmen Keates / Cindy Keong / Tim Sinclair / Chloe Wilson / Pascalle Burton / Nathan Shepherdson / David Stavanger / Ghostboy / Johanna Featherstone / Matt Hetherington / Jeremy Thompson / Angela Gardner / Louise Oxley / Lesley Synge / Max Ryan / Ron Pretty / Jaya Savige / Aidan Coleman / Kevin Gillam / Andy White / Marisa Allen / Eliza Hull / Eleanor Jackson / Bit Booker / Nick Powell / Vladislav Nekliaev / Michelle Dicinoski / Chris Lynch / Betsy Turcot / Nicola Scholes / Sheish Money

Rhizanthella Gardner

The sensuous signs offer us a new structure
of time, time rediscovered at the heart of lost
time itself, as an image of eternity
~Deleuze

Sequestered in earth, invisible flowering
truffled to fungus in wet dark. Sniff past
the ground, see past the crack in the soil
incise with fingertips the parted dirt, to find
the threatened orchid, sessile and yawning
breath like honey

He rolls away from her and the smell of them
puffs from the sublayer of sheets, meeting places
of bodies, wet and sticky shrink back in the quiet
away from the heat, sound sinks deep into
their inner ears

These hours are torn from their timeline, her heart
from its shape, her bare hands from their image
She is speaking inside herself and each word
burns long enough to clothe his back in what
she can't contain

Slow speed of night moving into the unseen
deadline of morning like a tongue into a mouth
stroking language

Bucket Orchid

Labyrinthine flower
of courtship, and its
sodden bees, set free
after the glue has set

Looking into its throat
almost the shape of
an eye, or a hand, like
the origin of a myth

Disappointment only
opens its dirty palm
the second time round

The return visit-
she says to him 'Now I
see.' Closes her eyes

Sandal of Aphrodite Orchid

"Looking at the bag-shaped labellum
of the Paphiopedilum gave me the notion that
it had been left here by some kind of alien"
~Takashi Kijima, photographer, author of Orchids


Follow the italic slope
of his refined constellation, his
vulgar nebula, his search for
the insect-like space man

Be guided by colour
By the scarlet veins at the
throat, where it falls open
Measure all things against
the length of your thumb

and when you want to
know who's been loving

check between the fibres
of Aphrodite's doormat

Man Orchid

Be thou opened

Labellum resembling torso
and limbs, head of petals
Simplest accuracy

outside
roar of leaves and her
dog doesn't bark anymore
knowing his smell, sound
of his step

Cluster-like inflorescence
he sees their feet under
the sheet, watches the
half-buried churnings

His lust is pungent and she
can smell him through
the closed window, telepathy
of scent, layered at the mouth

soft tongued and accurate
wired into the word-roots
Orchis Anthropophora
aequitas

Neofinetias

Corruption,
to think its smell
makes the air heavy

Lizard Orchid

The flower is disguised
as a lizard diving headfirst into
itself


The hunters have travelled
ten miles inland with a hundred
thousand invisible seeds attached
to their trousers

Sometimes, believing themselves
to be set upon by an unseen enemy
they fill their clay pots with sticky
harvest, walk further into
the forest they do not know

Unseen movement becomes
sound pulled closer, sound to
the hunter an idea in alphabet

Eyes to detail in the humus
they stumble past the goatish
odour of their prey

Ghost Orchid

In 1882 the orchid hunter Roebelin awoke
to find the ladder to his tree house gone.
He lay on his back looking at flowers of lilac
and cinnamon through the hole in his roof.


Moon's ingress into Cancer
Shiva toenail against indigo
with dandruff stars

He comes back quietly to the house
He thinks he hears her eyelids open
Puts his hand on the place near his
stomach where he imagines
forgetting starts, stops
an out breath

The room is a dense garden of her
smell, soon he will have to say
something, soon she will reach
from under the blanket for his
hand

Lovers of the lovers whisper agitato
in their sleep somewhere past

Slick twinned legs of the Ghost
Orchid, still one with root and
nectar spur, tongued by moths
who won't strive to
outlive themselves

Early Purple Orchid

( But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them )


Unsure new lover grins
and name after name is lost
from her open mouth

Rooted in clean air of
the moon theatre
Ruined epiphyte

Is it how she unmakes the
bed? how she undresses
in the cold

Mimicry of wasp
and spider
Lost calling

She almost
holds his hand, almost
pulls back his hair
in her fist

Snarl deep-
throated aggregate
can't incant blue
exile in darkness

Her body is full
of empty chambers
trailing fingertips

maggot death stench
steeped in warm goat's milk
to make philtre

Barely touched becomes
whisper

Blue Butcher Orchid

for Miss Jane's birthday



Inking the fingers
dialect and echo
Blue Butcher of tongue
peeled from its industry
          from roof of mouth
to reluctant curls
turned slightly left, new
        implication in Orchis
sepal to petal
cupped calyx, funnelled
modified into a lip

A Thought

wide as lightning
bodies of the lovers
skin sloughed off
and still rubbing

Sleeping Beauty

That whole time
she slept

all those years
amongst overgrowth
in ivory

They pounded
on her door









*There's some more of these over at now! --> heroin love songs

Chapbook Review. Paul Harrison's meet me at gethsemane

I had made a rule for myself that this blog would be a simple little repository for my poetry, with a little aside from time to time, but I’ve decided bend it a little and share my thoughts on some things that catch my attention.

I was asked to write a blurb for Paul Harrison’s first chapbook “meet me at gethsemane” But I’ve enjoyed reading it so much I have decided to share a short review of it here.


meet me at gethsemane



Paul Harrison is at times the propagandist of his own opinions and maybe that’s just the anti-venom needed to take on the irresistible allure of blind faith. He doesn’t test a statement for truth, there’s no hesitation or disguised plea for corroboration in these poems. Self-consciousness is stripped away then returns to dance in your lap.

later she says
you know doll
you’re not
supposed
to touch
& i smile
& say
i didn’t know
but really
i knew
exactly
& all along
what went down
& what it was
i did to her
& you

~from “doll”

Simple language, natural as speech serves as a vehicle for a psychologically dynamic exploration of absurd social rituals and sensation.

The givens of life are what they are, often enough our lives are a dark and obscure mission. These poems, with their blunt, claustrophobic lines and lack of artifice, stark paralysis pressed against the stasis of the page are life affirming, they bring us into a direct encounter with lacerating relationships which layer rather than expose. They invite us to celebrate and grieve our shared isolation and the failure of responsibility.

the grown-ups
taught us kids
property rights
are based
on violence

~from “watching another ad for fridge and washer city”

Even the literary references, though many, are pared down, splayed and pinned to the page.

and of course
a rose is a rose
impossible
to overlook
or fathom

~‘all at sea’


Someone pointed out to me recently, the Latin origins of passion stem from passio ; to suffer, to endure. compassion being, to endure with. The delusion that the creative act is somehow redemptive excludes. This collection showcases the irreparable, it encourages trust because it doesn’t try to hide its purposes.
What did Jesus meet at Gethsemane? a final test of faith, prayer, the first consent of divine love, or a torturous death, an empty tomb and three screaming women running in terror? No god, no loyal followers, but leaving “mark lost in the forest” to invite us all to walk in his teacher’s shoes?

Paul wants us to meet him in Gethsemane, I might have resisted if it weren’t for the pleasure I take in the final poem in the book, all four words;

rothko
painted
empty
graves

Then, there is this, from “some things are known” which I think sums ‘it’ up quite nicely.

having lived fourteen thousand times longer than
the flies that congregate around this lake
cannot be remembered or numbered
only repeated
cannot be described or shared
only encountered

~Brilliant! I’m there, with bells on.

Go get yourself a copy from the most excellent and quite new Mulla Mulla Press here; Mulla Mulla Press

Architecture

Always the animal
in her, unable to find a room
long enough to get a bit of speed up
in.















And something here: clickety link The Diamond and The Thief

Gimme Shelter

Gimme Shelter is a not-for-profit event with every cent from ticket sales going directly to feed and nurture the homeless. Tickets are dirt-cheap at $25 + booking fee in advance, $35 on the door from www.heatseeker.com.au, The Fremantle Arts Centre and usual outlets. Under 16’s are $10 and kids under 6 are free. Gates open at 5.30pm.

Also performing is Brave and the Bird. And who are Brave and the Bird? Gimme Shelter organisers are remaining tight-lipped on this one. “We can’t tell you for legal reasons”, said event organiser Phoebe Corke. “All I can say is it’s a couple of big name performers, we’re very excited and the crowd is going to go wild when they see who it is.”






I hope if you're in Perth you come along to this! (oh & and I know who Brave and The Bird are ;P na nah nah nah naaaah! )

Pop This Date in The Diary or on The Back of Your Hand or.... anywhoos it's December 17!

Come celebrate the launch/arrival/release of In Hand, my book of poetry. 7:30pm, December 17 @ The Fringe Gallery, 94 Bawdan st, Willagee.

To be launched by Dr Andrew Burke, with readings from ze book by the dapper & strange, Black Rider himself, Jeremy Balius and the sky snapping, word mistress of Recoil, Coral Carter and music by the wildly delicious Kissin' Cousins! Bring your dancing slippers... and a poem to share!

Some blurbs ..s.... s

Amanda Joy's In Hand is a sustained love letter, a farewell signature in a handwritten flourish. It is a celebration of the body, of loss and acceptance, family, water and landscape. These poems work their spells in language cast under pressure into a sublime, lyrical whole. ~Anthony Lawrence


The poetry of Amanda Joy stretches out to touch the reader both physically and spiritually. Her words penetrate to the heart and soul of relationships, opening to the naked eye not only those we have with lovers, friends and strangers, but that which we have with the natural world that surrounds us. Then deeper still, to the relationship between our own thoughts, needs and desires.
In Hand has a devotional quality. Each poem an experience, to be carried with us and contemplated throughout the day; each poem a flower of mystery, whose petals await their revelatory blossoming.
~Ray Sapienza, Moongaze Publishing, editor of Fragile Arts Press, author of Tumbled Streams


‘In Hand’, by Australian writer Amanda Joy, offers much in a diverse selection of poems. These are poems of love, desire, longing and language as experienced in these and other states. The common trope these days of the body as language is nevertheless used in many vivid and quite extraordinary poems.
Any reader who engages with Joy's poems will find many such subtle constructions, courage to confront the real, or the mysterious, and the general adventure of life and language. Knowledge and sometimes some ‘difficulty’ in this writing, thus enhances a life lived - but a life revealed in subtle ideas, and vivid images and sharp details, and as language, lived intensely. ~Richard Taylor, Conversations With a Stone


Amanda Joy's writing conveys perfect fragility as she tells of a world where beauty is temporary and to be held reverently for the moment it exists
~ Victoria Fotios, Sunday Morning Spiders

Tesselates (verb)

“fists have many forms” ~Margaret Atwood

She has become the hollow room
of this house with its black throat

Her hands are holding
a porcelain cup

I’ll use this truth later, but here,
this stealing is done with
fingers, even ones holding
keys of doors

still
this is a borrowing, I will
borrow your hands, I will
place them
on
my chest, I will
be the wanky fucker
who discerns

my own enjambment, I will
strip the face off
this poem

until
it bleeds gently
into this

patient tongue
of sea lapping smooth the rocks,
gulping down
the swimmers who can’t

Haiga @ The Fringe Gallery