Title: Sport 37

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2009, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 37: Winter 2009

Anna Livesey

page 65

Anna Livesey

It Was Onward and Upward

It was onward and upward,
the wall was green outside and I did not think
I would look at it again.

In the mellow depths of caramel
the day was draining slowly, we were
still walking by the waterside,
the big ship still
sailing in to collect.

If the debt were not a debt
but forgiven
I would go less, I would be
less a curtain pulled across the window.

In medias res, the collation, cold and elegant
caught us as we lifted it to our heads
to bite, to swallow.

I will not be back, I said, I came back early.
I'll be leaving I said, taking a seat,
sitting down to bread and salt and a talk with my mother.

If memory serves—but it does not, only
whistles and scratches like a branch against the wall.

If it serves, if it falters, the wall was coloured,
or clear as glass, strained thin by heat and thinking, by the ritual
of a cat, checking the position of fence, washing pile, a leg
known to belong to its owner.

page 66

Buoyant

As it happens I am this evening
way hopeful.
A ship, not alone,
rather populated as a small city.
The people walk the deck, which steadies under them.
The ship notices the water
to purr through it.
There are lights in the evening, dances.

I am a walking drum
in the long snout of the ship.
I am under several men on the causeway.
I am dining out on the story.
I am always short of cash.

At the Captain's post, a series
of dots indicates position.
He swings in the chair.
There is a map in him
and a map below him.
If there were music here,
I think he would be singing.

As it happens, I am this evening
ducking under cables.
Ropes connect and unloose.
In the ballroom they are playing
Daisy My Love.
In the foreword and the afterword
the ship is all closed up.
In the ocean the citizens
are taking a vote.

page 67

Bonsense

for Heather Tone

Grass kingdom,
higher than headwise, horsewise.
A tree looks down on you from the roadside.

Paddock peopled with tiny horses,
a stirrup, leg-up, leg over,
more tiny size, more
proliferation of tinyness.

Un-joy, a kind of blank seriousness—
it doesn't live among the horses.

You are a long way away, in a library.
You say, if your small library were a body,
poetry would be the head and torso,
fiction a limb, reference a limb.

From the chest of your books,
you enjoin belief
in outposts of miniature sense or nonsense,
or going further, antonym, bonsense
the elaborate folly of the heart and brain,
built curlicued, baroque.

What bonsense is this, a tiny horse, a tiny library?
The great iced cake of relationships,
the ornamental pony of compassion,
the perennial shout (Shout) of shared exclamation.

page 68

Next Time

The other day my sister was trying to dress you after a spa.
She said you wouldn't lift your leg.
You had your trousers half on.
You said yes, yes, yes,
but the foot stayed on the ground.

She thought
this is my mother
there is no way
to make her lift her foot.

My sister laughed when she told me.
She said people were looking at you.

I said, 'Next time make her sit down.'
I said, 'Next time use the family changing room.'
I said, next time get yourself a better mother,
there's something wrong with this one, my sister.
Next time be more careful, this mother is broken, I said.