La Mama Poetica
I read from Year of the Wasp at La Mama Poetica a week ago.
It was a great night. I really enjoyed listening to the work of Alana Kelsall, Sam Ferrante and Komninos, and poet Brendan Bonsack took some wonderful pictures.
The evening was also reviewed by Nicholas Elliot for Melbourne Spoken Word. Here's what Nicholas said:
"[Deane’s] poems and his delivery were ‘intense man’, with nightmarish, plague ridden images: wasps, a dying fox, a murderous eagle on Alexander Avenue at 3am that made your skin prickle with dread and foreboding. Visceral stuff ... His poetry was compelling like cruelty you can’t look away from. And that’s how he stood; very still, looking straight ahead, unflinching."
Read the full review here.
Cuba, 2001
President Obama is visiting Cuba. To mark the occasion I am posting a poem from my first collection of poetry, Subterranean Radio Songs (2005). I wrote this poem during and after a stay in Havana. You could call it a non-fiction poem.
Romeo y Julieta
1.
To fish
in this post-Soviet bloc, present-Americano blockade
of a Special Period
in the twilight of a Habana Vieja teeming
with Habaneros toting handlines
is no leisure activity.
It is economic necessity.
I swim a near dark as close as communal bath water.
Dodge the lines of jiniterismo visible by the whites
of their smiles.
(No, novia. Gracias, I say;
I don’t want to be your pony.)
Moskovitchs grind, bicycles glide
past—accompany a cluster of musicians
wheezing Buena Vista Social Club tunes
to tempt the tourists.
(Lo siento, amigo, I shrug smile;
I don’t wish to salsa your hermana.)
A crowd gathers.
Police down arms to hammer a horseshoe of humidity
around a whippet of a man, body bowed
like one of those fibreglass poles sportsmen wield
in the Gulf Stream. Drinking mojitos,
thinking themselves Ernest.
The crowd contracts,
confirms that Communism is a centipede.
Once-upon-a-time comrades
compressed
into a collective, many-legged desire
for consumer goods—computers, cellulars,
wide screen TVs, air conditioners, flash cars,
fresh food.
2.
Before my arrival
my Mexican familiaris intimated all Castro had to offer
was contraband tobacco
and Cuban fellatio.
More question than information, as I recall.
But I contended I desired only baseball.
Saw myself behind the batter’s cage
at Estadio Latinamericano
sipping espresso from a paper thimble,
listening to the bleacher calls.
The eternal search for the elusive
curve ball.
3.
Strike two. Ball three.
The count is full.
The crowd aroused.
The pitch waist high
and hard—
Begging to be hit.
4.
I came to Cuba carting a cardboard suitcase
and a straw hat.
I am highly flammable,
but buy a carton of Romeo y Julieta.
My passport has expired,
but I possess greenbacks.
I think myself alone,
but have a suede-headed chaperone:
My kid sister.
Together, we have ridden the Yucatan
in second-class bus carriages.
Both of us in remission
from births, deaths
and marriages.
Habana Vieja is our last stop in the Americas.
South of Cuba is suburbia—
mortgages, marriage to my West Indies,
a long suffering Baptist bride,
and children I am yet to name.
Call them Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria.
Call me Columbus. Better yet, Cortez.
5.
The promise of capitalism thrashes about
in Bahia de la Habana,
fights for freedom,
threatens to baptise the fisherman.
But the fish cannot outlast the centipede.
As each fisherman is bent to breaking
he is relieved by fresh hands
until, rotation by rotation,
the prize is reeled in
—gaffed, netted—
left to drown
on the warm concrete
in the late evening
of Castro’s Cuba.
A panting
yellow-fin tuna
with a torso as thick
as a man’s thigh.
['Following the many elbows of the Yarra']
Following the many elbows of the Yarra,
taking the racing line,
retracing the route to the Toorak school that did not teach,
but bequeathed a tie,
perhaps,
I was blinded by the nostalgia of a life half lived,
perhaps,
and did not see the vixen spirit herself across the road
just in time to feel the bite of my tyres.
There was no time to brake.
My foot was half on, half off, the accelerator when
I felt the shock of her through my steering wheel,
heard her cry.
I could have kept driving into the night—
the road was dead, the streets asleep—
but could not forget that time when,
coming down Brown Mountain in a Toyota,
I killed a goanna and kept going,
lacked the decency to drag the carcass off the road,
and how I carried that sin in my glove compartment still.
I stopped.
Stepped out into the early morning,
the air cold enough to turn breathe to steam,
and stood by the taillights of my old 318,
watched the fox lie in the glare of a street light,
half a world away from her natural home,
and felt something close to pity.
Waited until a fleeting shadow—at first an eclipse—
grew smaller, darker, then manifested as a wedge-tailed eagle
that landed on the double-white line without a sound,
wing tips sweeping the leaves from the blue-black road.
The eagle was telling me she was watching me
watch the fox, so, now I knew I had no choice.
I had to act.
I left my car behind,
purring its soft red cloud of carcinogens,
and heard my boots strike the bitumen
as I drew close enough to see my animus
reflected in her animal eye.
The vixen was breathing—more like panting—
and unable to move more than her head.
Without thinking,
I reached down to touch her burnt orange fur,
but she had seen enough of my kind
on her backyard travels
and, throwing her head up, caught my thumb
in the trap of her razor teeth
What happened next surprised us all.
Without speaking, I took off my old school tie
to bind my bleeding hand,
walked back to the car, popped the boot
and came back to the fox with the wheel jack
swinging low from my good hand,
then let that hand rise and fall
beneath the shadow of the street light,
and listened to the sound of steel splintering bone
while the eagle—with a sweep of mighty wings—
lifted herself from the road to seek solace in the sky.
This poem was recently published by Australian Book Review for their Poem of the Week podcast. It is taken from my upcoming poetry collection, Year of the Wasp, which will be published by Hunter Publishers.
You can hear the poem at ABR here.
A new poem published by Australian Book Review
Australian Book Review has published a new poem of mine.
The poem doesn't have a title, but is identified by its opening line, 'Following the many elbows of the Yarra.' It's a narrative poem, one of the last pieces from my next collection of poetry, Year of the Wasp, which will be published in 2016.
You can listen to the poem on SoundCloud, or read it at ABR, here.