Tuesday Poem: ‘A Late Walk, Matapouri Track’ by Martin Porter

A Late Walk, Matapouri Track

To enter, I badly needed
Vixen nerves,
The courage of midnight,
A shadow path
Into the hollow clearings,
The stink of den deepening
With the starless darkness.

Mortified I imagine hands,
Feel the pelt forest,
From the fur riven stump,
And something touches
My cold face,eyes,
With sacrificial fingers
Tearing delicately.

I imagine a legend,
Blank heirlooms,
Run through dreams,
The thrill of fronting
A long, distressing,
Hot-house death
A cold loneliness.

In sharp recognition,
A fox-faced sun
Springs into the
Redstained half-light,
Immaculate,
Brilliantly red,
Then burnt yellow.

With a deeper cry
My child shadow,
With a sharp history
Alive with her instinct
Of self-preservation,
Sings
Her birth-yell.

*

Martin Porter offers the following commentary about this poem: © Martin Porter 2012

“A Late Walk, Matapouri Track” is a poem written about the Tutukaka coast using words taken excusively from three poems, Ted Hughes “The Thought Fox” (1957), Adrienne Rich “Abnegation” (1969) and Adrienne Rich “Fox” (2001). The challenge was made easier by selecting a range of eras and two different poets, but more difficult as there are no foxes in this area of New Zealand.

Although the limited vocabulary might be seen as a serious constraint, it turned into a remarkably liberating experience, revealing opportunities for metaphors that would have remained invisible otherwise. In some ways, this can be seen as a subordinate of the syntax-semantic-vocabulary model of ekphrasis, but where the semantics and syntax are not constrained, only the vocabulary.

An additional, unexpected, benefit was the development of the concepts by the vocabulary. The development from dark fear to bright relief was steered, but not created, by the available lexicon, but the remaining words revealed an unthought-of opportunity of further investigation into self-realisation, progressing the poem from a merely descriptive piece to one with a moe sophisticated meaning.

More detail of the actual process of writing this poem can be found in my blog “Small Stony Notes and Jottings” here and in additional entries in the same month.

Martin Porter gazes at the sky from the winterless north of New Zealand. A member of writers’ groups in Whangarei and Jersey, he writes mainly poetry and won first prize in the Channel Islands Writers Competition in 2005. Some of his work can be found at Take Flight and Poetry Notes and Jottings.

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More Tuesday poems from the terrific and eclectic mix of Tuesday Poets below. Just click on over to the main hub and see what’s happening. Cross-continental poetry fun.

For more Tuesday Poems, go here.

FLASH MOB: Antarctica

Antarctica  by Michelle Elvy

I find the boy in a drainpipe and when I ask him what are you doing in there? he looks at me as if I should already know and says I’m looking for Antarctica.

Later at home, my wife catches me staring at the tiny specks of dust spiraling in the late-afternoon sunlight and when she asks What are you thinking? for about the millionth time I hate her but I also know I’d hate it even more if she stopped asking so I shrug and say I’m thinking about Antarctica.

I go back the next day and the boy is gone. I wait for him because I know there’s something we needed to say but forgot. The sky around me is heavy metallic:  the hour before snowfall. I pull my collar tight and head home and when I get there my wife’s standing naked in the kitchen. It has started to snow and the only colour in the room is the orange of her fingernails. The snow falls hard and we can’t get warm, no matter how hard we make love. Later I’m staring again and my wife says Antarctica? but how could she know I’m more than a million miles away with the boy in the drainpipe.

I return the next day and crouch down on my hands and knees. My shoulders barely fit but I wedge myself in. I am about to turn and crawl down the pipe when a stranger walks by and sees me and when he asks what are you doing in there? I look at him as if he should already know and say I’m looking for Antarctica.

**

The FLASH MOB 2013 competition period is in its final hours, so I’m posting my story now. Even if it’s a non-competing entry, I’m quite glad to place it here, alongside my other post today — Sam Rasnake’s beautiful poem ‘Some Last Things‘, featured at the Tuesday Poem site.

For more about FLASH MOB 2013, please see the site. It’s a crazy and fun writing initiative including writers from all over the world. On June 20, all the mob stories will be posted at the FLASH MOB spread and we’ll all spend the next two days globe-hopping and reading each other’s work. Then on June 22 — (Inter)national Flash Fiction Day (and National Flash Fiction Day in New Zealand) — the winners of the competition will be announced and feted across oceans and time zones. 

And please feel free to comment, dear readers. I rarely post my own stuff these days, and going to Antarctica was a strange and wonderful experience for me this week — especially as I’m searching for shade in the heat of western Fiji.

Tuesday Poem: Meet me at the Hub!

I’m Editor at the Tuesday Poem hub today, and  I am very pleased to bring readers ‘Some Last Things’ by Sam Rasnake — with author commentary as well. It’s a personal and beautiful poem. Enjoy!

And for more Tuesday Poems please see the sidebar on the Tuesday Poem page, where you’ll find members of the collective and the poems they’ve chosen to share this week.

For more Tuesday Poems, go here.

FLASH MOB 2013: Jan Fitzgerald

Monkey Business

by Jan Fitzgerald

‘This is not the Tooth Fairy perched on the end of my bed,’ Joe backs up against the wall, gazing at the gorilla.

‘It must have a name, so I can politely ask it to go away.’

The gorilla leans forward and looks intensely into Joe’s face.

My name is Bett Noir, she says without moving her lips, then bares a set of teeth like the white keys of a piano.

*

Joe’s life became full of avoidance.

His wife observed the changes with concern.

‘Why do you always go around the clothes line on the way to your car?’ she asked one day.

How the hell could he tell her a souped-up purple Morris 1100 was now parked behind his car? One with an African flag.

*

He’d tried to persuade Bett Noir to park her car in the garage first, but instead she’d taken him on a hair-raising chase after a truck carrying Bonito banana boxes.

Joe screamed as the speedo went into the red.

A police car finally drove them into the kerb.

‘Are you out of your tree?’ the officer said.

‘Sir, it was the guy in the monkey suit!’ Joe staggered out of the car.

‘Yeah right!’ said the officer. ‘Saw that movie last week!’

Bett Noir threw back her head and beat her chest.

*

Joe devised a plan. If he renamed the gorilla in his head, she couldn’t be summonsed and find out where his shoe factory was. That brought relief for months. Until he signed an incoming parcel and saw his address. Game over.

He looked up to see Bett Noir behind his biggest industrial machine. Reels and bobbins were going ape shit.

Pay your staff peanuts, she grinned, this is what you get!

*

A guest appearance by Jan Fitzgerald  as she joins FLASH MOB 2013. For more details about the mob, go here. 

Jan FitzGerald (b. 1950), has been published in all the mainstream NZ literary journals since the 1970s and in The London Magazine, Acumen (UK), Orbis (UK), and others.  Her latest poetry book is entitled On a day like this (Steele Roberts, Wellington, NZ). Jan works in Napier , NZ, as a full-time artist.

Flash Mob 2013: Kathy Sewell

The Waiting Game

by Kathy Sewell

He lay curled around her and declared his love. He said something about wishing they could be together forever. She’d replied ‘Yes, especially as I’m pregnant. We could get married.’

Pregnant? He felt like he’d swallowed rocks that stretched his gut until it hit the ground and bounced into his groin. ‘No way, no, no!’ he’d yelled, pulled on his jeans and ran out the door. He had nowhere to go, it was his caravan.

She’d left, refusing to talk to him. After a day or two for the news to filtrate his brain cells, his pride kicked in. He was ‘the man,’ after all a baby meant he would be á father. The more he’d thought about it, the more convinced he was that he’d make a great dad. She’d refused to see him and the next two weeks of his life were hell. He’d toss and turn cradling her cardigan that smelled of her perfume named after a flower. He missed her warmth, her touch and the way he could mould perfectly around her tiny form like a protective glove on chilly nights. Tama felt lost and realised without her, his life was a jigsaw with missing pieces, never complete. Tough Tama, footy hero and pig hunter was defeated. He begged, he pleaded, he wrote letters and finally sprayed ‘MARRY ME,’ with shaving foam along the side of his dad’s Bedford and parked it outside her house. He’d slept there all night.

The next morning her brother came out and said. ‘Mum says you better come in for breakfast and a talk.’

He spat on his hand, brushed his hair down, put on his sneakers and chewed a peppermint. He walked up the path with crossed fingers burrowed deep in his pockets. He needed to pee, really bad.

*

A guest appearance by Kathy Sewell as she joins FLASH MOB 2013. For more details about the mob, go here. There is still one day to enter the competition/ blog fest. 

Kathy Sewell was born in Cornwall Park, Auckland. Her vivid imagination often got her into trouble as a child. As an adult she learned to channel it through stories and writing plays. Several have been performed throughout the North Island. She has almost completed her B.A. at Massey University and has had her first children’s book published with Te Whare Nga Kupu. A writerholic refusing treatment or a cure as she loves her alphabetical addiction….

Flash Mob 2013: Kate Mahony

Specialist topic

By Kate Mahony

The girl sits upright but it’s clear she’s thinking about something far removed from the reading room with its polished floors, timbered tables and high ceilings. I am researching my chosen topic, hoping to gain a place on Mastermind. As part of my preparation, careful observation of others is the first discipline I require of myself.

She’s not even pretending to read, unlike the oldies who spread out a newspaper before sinking into unfitful snoozing. As someone who likes to keep abreast of his literary knowledge, I am reminded of the phrase, waiting for Godot.

Eventually, I hear her chair move. I return my reading material and take the stairs down to the ground floor.  Outside, I blink as my eyes adjust to the sunlight. She’s at a wooden table in the courtyard area. I choose a neighbouring spot and fossick in my lunchbox causing two sparrows to descend quickly onto my table. I shoo them away. ‘Annoying creatures,’ I say, directing my comment towards the girl.

In a place like this, we are all strangers. People often warm to the sound of another human voice. I toss out a gentle question or two and learn that she has no place to stay.

Yet again, I explain my mother’s unique situation, struck down in her middle years by a mystery illness and needing company while I am conducting my business. A room provided for the right person.

I wait for her to ask some questions, but she just nods and says okay. She hoists her small backpack onto her back.

I lead the way, not bothering to check she’s following. When you step into your specialist area, everything is easy.

*

This marks a guest appearance by Kate Mahony for FLASH MOB 2013, a hybrid blog fest/ competition (more here). Welcome, Kate, and welcome to the FLASH MOB!

Kate Mahony has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand (2006). Her short fiction has appeared in Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 6, (Random House), Turbine, Takahe (Vols 71, 74), the International Literary Quarterly (Issue 14), Flash Frontier (August 2012, September 2012, January 2013), the anthology Tales for Canterbury (Random Static, 2011), Blue Crow Magazine (Australia), Microw 8 at Full of Crow (USA), Blue Fifth Review (USA), and Blackmail Press.

One of her short stories, A Good Person, was a finalist in the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award in 2008. She teaches short story writing at the Community Education Centre, Wellington.

FLASH MOB 2013: Derek Jones

Praxis V: Infinite loop, Fiction, Ideas, Writing, Infinite loop…

by Derek Jones

The beginning, the middle and the end of a line that forms a circle are simultaneously at infinite points along that line.

Consider the following: When did you decide to read this? Why? What caused your decision? To what end? What do you think will happen once you’ve stopped reading? And if something else happens instead, is that the beginning of the next experience or the end of your reading experience? Do you care? Do I care? Do you care if I care?

“Soon you’ll be discovered and thrust deeply into the bitter truth of this place.” Who said that? The author didn’t allocate the line to a character, and was undecided whether or not to include it. Critics may pounce on it as being autobiographical, theorising that the author’s recent drugs charges are smudged faintly but indelibly like a watermark on every page. Every fiction must embrace unavoidable elements of fact.

My muse told me that, “When it came to us, the only things worth considering were those things about which there was no more to consider.” I said I had no idea what she meant. She said, “Exactly. Only ideas are worth contemplating, nothing else is real.” I scratched my non-existent head with my non-existent fingers and said nothing. “Now you’re getting it,” she nodded.

I am minus grammar. My finite catalogue of non-human signs curtails communication. I lack subordinate clauses, mood, case, tense, prepositions and determiners. I suffer from severely restrictive expression. Abstract thought and idle chat are foreign to me. The software of my ancestors’ brains corrupted as competitors upgraded and expanded. Contemporaries brandish pens while I meekly wave a stick. My writing is limited to silly things such as this: I think, therefore perhaps I am a vignette?

The beginning, the middle, the end.

*

Another guest appearance by a writer jumping into the frenzied mob. More about FLASH MOB 2013 here.

Derek Jones is a New Zealand author who exists near Puhoi, North of Auckland. He has recently finished writing The Ghostwriter in the Machine – the unauthorised autobiography of Anonymous_Author© and has pledged to write using his real name until the fictional literary voice he created has its memoirs published. Patently, judging by the book’s description, he may be submitting as Derek Jones for some time.