STRUNG COUNTRY

I am a woman on wires.

Daybreak is a bruise.
This bent thin twist of single-mother with sun and habit creases
undercut by laughter. I live within lines,
the copper sometimes groans and touch
is arthritic keyboards and sometimes pitiless plastic telephony.

Is anybody there?
I am interrupting the whirr
of flour, subtle rills of conversation promise all that my call
has ripped from Maggie’s day.
Please don’t ring me at work/at home/
when I’m having sex with my husband. The scours of territory.

My life on Farrer Road knows its own busy. I can hear the
calumny of incoming demand
and say no. Wires can be snipped
as easy as life support. Let this small-town day work
in solitude.

The flattery and their frets,
I can weave a regional conference
June long-weekend
by email.... clever spider!

Distance – we would talk around it
sterilised by chain-smoked horizons
irrigated in bourbon.

Bone-ache and wide cats,
beside the flattery of crows
rain falls like crystalline sugar on unfed grasses.

Who’d want more? On this mushroom day
near a boiled cabbage forest
with a dishrag river and muesli-bar parrots in the trees.
The household pests have abandoned fear, parade
listlessly across the wooden floors.

In new shoes,
a woman in the streams. There is intimate silence
and imminent words. So we are webbed –
in open grids.
At the mailbox, a few drops fall on careful addresses -
letters to family
promises from sky.

LES WICKS' books are "The Vanguard Sleeps In" (Glandular, 1981),  "Cannibals" (Rochford St, 1985), "Tickle" (Island, 1993), "Nitty Gritty" (Five Islands, 1997), "The Ways of Waves" (Sidewalk, 2000), "Appetites of Light" (Presspress, 2002) & "Stories of the Feet" (Five Islands, 2004).  He's performed at festivals, schools, prison etc. Runs workshops across Australia & is editor of Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a river.