Ariga: Poetry: Three Poems by David Reiter

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Three Poems by David Reiter

Audition

Not that opiate when the brain lets go
a frantic grasp before flesh ricochets
into easy particles for microbes

but the glare of the second
take (rewind, rewind, the first
was a false start)

spotlight flaring off tiles
disinfected white because shy
before an audition with strangers

who'll make the cut if they match
the correct pace the tuning fork
of parents to entice a scrutineer's

tick. Old enough to charm a mirror
even deconstruct your birth name
you rankle at 'Simon' the over-type

of the mother-who-gave-you-up
but in this episode you're the acted
upon the emotive offcut 'say it for us

Si-mon' and you shake your head
that's not me then it doubles back
like indelible ink and the future

will focus again if only the scent
of your hair pleases and you find
a smile on cue. Hearth's the prop

where disbelief transcripts art —
'thank you we'll be in touch
who's next?'

Daddy

1.

Couldn't last.

Grew so fast you left
your heart at the starting line
until you were puffed

No fibre-optics
to retool your cardiac
so you grinned and lit
your first cigarette

a boy will mimic
what a man's got to do

but no one made fun
of your shadow for long

2.

Another war.

Everyone in four-colour except you
and it wasn't fair there were jews
dying in Poland and it just wasn't

fair. You cruised down to surplus
and bought a past war. At twilight
you marched to the eternal flame
with spit-polish pride. Singing flags

keeping in code with the ghetto.
Teaching the japs and krauts
what stragglers can do
with the soft anger
of imagined guns.

The sparrows were impressed.

And the women.

You were last on the cliff
but they'd still have danced you
jew or not
on their detours from munitions

they wanted your danger
on their tongue
scalding their pleats
with the musk of starlets

Was it a miracle that you didn't father
your own army back then?
Or just an omen?

You really believed they had to be Jewish
to fall pregnant.

3.

By the time you thought of school again
they were blinded with confetti. Anyway
you didn't see the point — the smart

had miscalculated the power of hate
had collected lampshades of jew-skin
had fluked on to the mushroom cloud.

You'd get on with what really mattered.
Making money! America was on the move
so you bought a truck and got your dreams

filthy. Work came fast and furious
and you'd never felt so good except
where were all the women now?

Gone to officers every one.
Pledging their love to repopulate!
But they wanted stories of enemy fire

and wounds before they'd come across
and you couldn't lie even for sex
and you thought the fist in your chest

was them so you worked even harder
until your heart spat the metronome.
That wasn't fair, either.

Genesis 2.0
for Siobhan Erin

Then God said
'it's not good that man
should be alone'

I held back on this baby
deliberately.

To someone poking through
post-modern ashes I might
say my reason was to delay/
sustain/enflame the spark
of arousal.

That would be untrue
but then the best truths
start out as fiction
and end up better lies.

We're so good at genetics now.
Testing our hypotheses on other
species, we enfold our mistakes
in concrete wombs. Next year
we'll e-mail our shareware

to the stars. Before God subscribed
to microsoft, the cosmos was dull math
a virgin forest eager to be formatted.
Now every hacker has her home page

allusive pathways, silicon lagoons
under retracted nipples for which lyrics
are mundane. We're making battery hens
of our children with The Simpsons.
Fear of knives and singular bullets

is anaesthetised by killer satellites
who solder an elegance on brutality
while our most virile antibiotics
leak their G-codes to supergerms.

In the midst of all this noise
I got you pregnant. Our chances
had been slim — ambivalent sperm
hardened eggs — shadow puppets
instead of collision. But it happened

without test tubes or Chinese herbs
despite global warming and prophetic
talkshows. Trying to beat the fracture
I injected a poem between your legs.

Even then you doubted:
The pain seemed too prosaic
and the rhythm all wrong —
break into song you who fail
to bear for I will set your stones

in bright colours and frame
your window panes with agate
but the scan showed a proper
image swirling in your sack

so we had tickets in the queue.
You asked me to write about it
to gild the thought before it cooled
but I said poems don't discriminate
between good luck and misfortune

in fact they feel more in context
with the underdog than the hero.
Better to soothe with a mantra
to lure the Golden Average.

So I held back on this poem
deliberately.

It didn't prevent a single atrocity
in Bosnia or shatter the el niño
or sanctify the Siberian Tiger —
not that tracts ever do

but it kept the focus elsewhere:
no kamikaze suitcases
no spiteful syringes
no faeces in the peanut paste
no journos in a feeding frenzy.

let water be brought to wash
your feet then rest yourselves
under the tree and I will bring
a morsel of bread to refresh you

I hoped you'd understand.

Then that olympic instant
when the surgeon held our baby high
in the screaming air before your blood
could be swished down the drain
of routine.

It was not for words to bathe
our little girl but the hot suds
of touch as bruised grey flesh
calmed to pink and eyes blinked

at the conspiracy of light and shape.
It was archetype to be experienced
not second-guessed with marble
the genesis of family chuffing steam
for the sentient book of distance

and in that dream the angel spoke
to me saying 'arise and return
to the land of your kindred'.

With this, briefly, I have.

Dr David Reiter is Director of Interactive Publications, a consultancy in Brisbane, Australia and an award-winning poet and short story author. His fourth book, Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems, was shortlisted at the 1998 Adelaide Festival Literature Awards. He set up the Electronic Editing and Publishing Course at the University of Canberra and was Founding Editor of Redoubt. A Ph. D in Creative Writing, he also graduated from the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course (Harvard University). His first play, Piano in the Garden, was produced by La Boite Theatre in their Springboards Program after being workshopped by the QTC. His second play, Hemingway in Spain, will have a rehearsed reading by City Theatre. Paul and Vincent, a radio play, was broadcast twice on ABC Radio National. His first children's book will be published by Lothian Books next year. A novel, a fifth poetry collection and three film script projects are under consideration. You can write to him c/o reiter@powerup.com.au

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