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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 11. June 2 1981
Poems
Poems
This Page ...
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The poetry on this page is by a new group who work together as the Terrace Poets, and includes Victoria students Patricia de Joux, Louise Mason and Rosemary Wildblood.
Patricia de Joux has recently launched an original venture in publishing. She is producing New Zealand poetry in quality broadsheets that have a multi-purpose format: they are folded as greeting cards with space on the back like postcards for letter, stamp and address. Known as 'Pamphilets', they include so far the poets Katherine Mansfield, Rachel McAlpine, Vivienne Joseph, Fiona Kidman, Louis Johnson (last year's Writer in Residence), Barry Mitcalfe, as well as the Terrace poets.
Eden
(After Erica Jong)
The apples, like our love
have reached fulfilment -
some lie beneath the tree:
fallen. A thrush with just
three swift stabs, discovers
what has taken me a lifetime
to discern: at the centre
of each red, red heart
there lies a worm.
Vivienne Joseph
Gas Chamber
Step quietly
q-u-i-e-t-l-y
This way
w-a-y
Don't touch
t-o-u-c-h
Hands behind your back
b-a-c-k
Step quietly
q-u-i-e-t-l-y
This way
w-a-y
Don't touch
T-o-u-c-h
The door
Huge
Metal
Shut
Iron teeth
Gripped the solid frame
Gripped the solid frame
I think I'll have a fag
f-a-g
she said
Gives me pleasure
p-l-e-a-s-u-r-e
At the end of a long day
l-o-n-g d-a-y
They've come thick and fast
t-h-i-c-k a-n-d f-a-s-t
today
t-o-d-a-y
Nigel Evans
Mythologies
These skies after rain intoxicate
with clarity of blue - the hillfolds
dazzle green as parrot wing. Clouds
pose
with unmoving precision. In fields,
sunlight bleaches the billowed backs
of fattening sheep.
But the air's not always so heady clear,
nor the view so pastoral ...
when winds snap at the heels of clouds;
mounting in grey and heaving droves,
the flax waves in frantic supplication;
dust whips round city rubbish bins,
and gangs on the rampage spill blood.
Patricia de Joux
Card Queen
Her red crooked fingers
sparkle diamonds
her lips curl gently
catching the smoke
winding like perfume
thru Jacks and Queens
rubbing shoulders
eyes glinting
twitching
winking hints
under the lamp wound low
the cards dance
thru arthritic fingers - swift sparrows
pecking hearts
grudging spades
she nudges the old men
sipping tea and tobacco
conjuring features in tea leaves
warning death
she wears black
her eyelashes black
her fingernails are scarlet.
Kathleen Gallagher
Entity
I am not
mist to swirl
and lose myself
behind leaves,
round stones
or vaguely disappear
in darkening skies.
Yet you
gaze past and
through me -
because of you
I am insubstantial -
a nothingness,
a no-count female.
The difficulty
is in fashioning
some pliant bladder
in which to scoop myself
to be contained
without escaping
into incoherence.
Rosemary Wildblood
In The Dark
The masks of four come close to me
in this manacle of night
I count the ways of annihilation
chanting their names
on beads of memory
Queen St car
backyard fence
operating table
Sydney balcony
They were caught
in exploding violation
unknown & expected
There were no clean cut
amputee solutions
Heard by telephone for two
read one in the newspaper
& the last was secondhand
Don't think about them often
Just sometimes
the masks appear in the dark
Louise Mason