Go Wagga Wagga!

Ahem. I have an incy-wincy poem in print and not wishing to blow my own trumpet (course!)I just thought I'd include a mention for it here on my little-seen, barely-read blog.

The publication 'fourW' is Australia's longest-running anthology publishing poetry and prose and I'm chuffed to bits to be included alongside such luminaries as Alicia Sometimes, Ivy Alvarez, Daniel King, Laurinda Motion, i.j.oog, Phillip Muldoon, Joan Cahill and others.

If you're not in Oz or anywhere close to locate a copy, check them out on the net or follow Derek Motions wonderful witty blog at http://typingspace.wordpress.com about all things literary from Wagga Wagga.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about said poem, I reproduce it here. Mind yourself on the rude bits.

Sigh. Fame.

Must work on Fortune next.

After

There are moments
pinned to you
as latent engrams
when a life coagulates in one drop:
sweat water saline blood ink semen

don’t sweat it:
one trickles down my freckled breasts
drops on the tiles I’ve mopped badly
so that the grime line is visible under the steel refrigerator doors
where I retrieve the bowl of Nectarines Aux Armagnac for the portly businessman
with the lechy colleague who asked me if I was aware of my own destiny
sniggering at the waitressy reply I give
since it would belittle me to talk philosophy
with a man who spat in his hors d’oeuvres so his partner would not try them

her hand wore
my raven ring:
the room intense with cold
when she took the whole pack of morphine pills
downed with the tiniest sip of liquid to avoid the retch reflex
the 400mg calculated by
current weight of seven stone (but does that include the lumps?)
three days before
my first birthday without a mother

I touched her shoulder
and wondered if we would hug today:
since her husband declared he no longer loved her or their two year old son
but preferred Natalia who had long straight hair and looked like
the photos of our mother in her sixties mini-skirt and kohl
who made jewellery for women to wear whilst fucking with their husbands
She was slumped into rolls of fat breasts and belly
and my hand didn’t span her upper arm
which used to look like Kate Moss’s
protruding from her pulling dress with spaghetti straps from Jakarta
when the only tears she shed were for
boys who looked like girls
or her mutilated grey Siamese

dropping the pizza
off the edge of the perfect white plate:
to stare at the amniotic fluid pooling under my table on the laminate flooring
you laid by hand on your cracked knee for three days with Brad
while you looked for the watch timer you forgot you were wearing
and I stared at the black interior of a holdall containing the doll sized nappies
I doubted I could fasten around the waist of a doll let alone a red faced squalling thing
with heart and lungs and pearlescent fingernails
that you would hold in your arms two hours later
while I investigated the hospital shower stall
and watched paint red blood
cascade down my inner thighs
to swill with water down the Art Deco floor grill

a sable brush
with a thick handle shaped like a carved chair leg:
made sweeping calligraphy flow across the stretched cotton frame
of the T-shirt that Caisa hung in her flat in Göteborg the one she was wearing in the photo
when we saw Ulrika
outside the museum on Götaplatsen
and I stood in the window next to some Europeans and thought will I always feel English
unable to see the future where my children speak Valenciano
and I read the digital European news emailed to me because
I need to find out if they’ve printed the article about our battle
to save the Carrascal Mountain from urban developers
or if my poem’s in print
on that forum

a tree stump
near the London to Cambridge railway line:
in the shade cast behind the corona glare of a station lamppost
his penis constricted by the black mesh of my fishnets I refused
to remove, his penetrating finger adorned me with the scarlet blush
of my first orgasm
caused as much by the sight of his purple prick dripping
as by the hoot of the oncoming train
and the backdraft whoosh
and the stars coming back into view

after.