Big Bridge #9

Poets of Australia

 

Jaya Savige

intercession

sitting on the back steps & it is
a basketball hoop without a net   appearing like a halo
above an empty garage   the taste of ashes or
any avalanche of all the one flavour mesmerising
the asphalt screen of a television set using the hoop
as an aerial for us to wonder at these ashes in colour.
so prayer remains the cheapest psychoanalysis
& the keys to this duplicity  (the cars of two lovers
locked together in a multi-storied carpark)  are an aria
in the opera of a thief’s pockets   about a woman who
scrapes hardened gum off footpaths and watches feet burn
on the tar in summer  waiting for a steamroller to
send her home early  by the escalator, her anodyne:
a melted button becomes a sacred shrine.



Settlement

beyond the bay window
a jumble of undulant breasts.

gym bunnies stretch muscles
I’ve never heard of, surfers fetch

the swell as it comes and goes in sets
like the gaudy fort da game of cigarettes.

bombs on the front page.
the tractor almost runs over us,

our arse prints leavening the serious
sand, wanting a rake for tourism

& the temporary tattoo
of our national flag

is taking days to disappear
off the back of my hand.



Jaya Savige lives on Bribie Island, Queensland, Australia, and is studying for a MPhil (Creative Writing) at the University of Queensland. He has been published in various newspapers, magazines, journals & e-zines, and is also the recent winner of the 2003 Val Vallis Poetry Award.

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