Fiction and Poetry by Averil Bones
Averil Bones lives in Sydney, Australia. She is influenced by the ocean and enjoys reading and swimming.
mailto:averil_bones@mcgraw-hill.com
New Poems
DELICIOUS
WHEN THE DESERT TURNS
SHE SAID "AS LONG AS YOU CAN BEAR THE LONELINESS"
SOMETHING EVIL WAS GNAWING AT MY HEELS
SHE SAID "AS LONG AS YOU CAN BEAR THE LONELINESS"
The Night You Called Me Hotlips
Moonlight's Touch And Late Breezes
PILE UP
Fit for a princess
with her prickly pea
or a hundred bedded strumpets
and their sailors sprung
lithe with fiery life,
drunk on enthusiasm.
Cross-hatched by quick love,
bodies lay memory on memory,
the weight of which will crush
metal coils called comfort,
so that even rats leave home
in search of something more
than sex and mattresses for food.
MORDICUS
It was the colour of ruby carnations
spiralling up the plastic tube
as it left my body, but I suppose
all I could see were dollar signs
and the quickfix takeaway food
I would buy with those bloodied coins.
I was hungry, you understand.
The needle was deep in my arm
in a way that was comforting,
something about that warm flow
against both sides of my skin at once.
The needle was there, and the nurse
was not, but she would be back with
her rough hands, and dirty white-moon nails.
There were to-ings and fro-ings about,
other needles in other arms, and
(I cannot tell you how often I have
relived, revived, remembered these moments)
somewhere amongst them, someone
who surely felt a little faint? A little
weak at the knees with disease?
But the needle was deep in my arm
sucking like a thirsty leech so that
when I left I would have been lighter
but for the bloodied coins in my pocket.
So now, lying on this seedy mattress,
staring at stars in the ceiling, I rekindle
the touch of those rough nurse hands,
and try not to think about voracious
virus fighter planes cruising under my skin,
and the weakness in my limbs and lungs,
the dreary dead weights behind my eyes.
LIKE MAGNETS
We two are like magnets,
repelling, sliding liquid skins
over imagined mattresses,
mouths open and breathing
close but smoothed with
aviation glass between us;
or some element that refuses to be broken
even by my most insistent woman's touch.
Your eyes are wide, but still I cannot reach you.
DELICIOUS
It was the only tool I could find,
so I spread out newspapers on my
parquetry flooring, sat cross-legged
with my back against the heater
(it was winter, but Sydney style),
and picked up the screw-driver.
It was the only way I could be
comfortable. And I knew, with secret smile,
that it would be messy and Bohemian,
decadent. So I poured the wine,
savoured that slosh so particular to white,
and lay my soft hands on a tight shell.
She was sandy, and petulant,
reluctant to permit my gross intrusion,
but the screwdriver did its rough work,
and the first oyster of two dozen was laid bare,
more thrilling than a million pearls
as it slipped down my pinked and eager gullet.
WHEN THE DESERT TURNS
They were driving a Kombi van through the Stuart Desert
famous for its Desert Pea, were flagged down
by a mirage of a man, whose smell was suddenly all too real.
>From there the desert's claw twisted in ancient boredom
and flung the couple from their car into the noonday sun,
bound and gagged them, shot him quickly in the back of the head, dead.
When they found her, she was still tied at the wrists, cowering sunburnt,
thirsty for the coolness of dark and oasis. She walked as if the earth
repelled her, and perhaps that's what the desert had in mind.
Australian kestrel,
our most common bird of prey,
hoversS
darts a keen eye
as my flute sings to blue sky
below young eveningšs cool
and flickering stars.
While fumes mingled with mist
dance like tortured wraiths
and the pale skin of gums
morphs into falling water,
traffic's ominous hum builds,
and builds roadkill's tragic carcass
back into bloodied bitumen.
The rain falls and falls like sadness,
and the whole sorry world sighs
for a taste of cleanliness,
yearns for a single grain of faerie dust
to wash away layer over layer
of filth, deceit, lust, despair
back to new babe scent, and hope.
AN UMBRELLA AND A KISS
After showing me how to swing a golf club,
you walked me out into the street
under a huge two tone umbrella,
and the sound of heavy rain on nylon
made me smile in spite of myself.
I couldn't get the key to work the car door;
my shaking fingers betrayed me,
and the slick metal handle felt so foreign
when all I wanted to touch was
your warm skin, and the cotton of your clothes.
Through the spokes of the umbrella
our eyes soft-focussed 'til I drew breath,
crossed my fingers, and put my lips on yours;
once, twice and again a little deeper
until the noise of the rain was forgotten.
By the time I found myself again
my bare feet were cold and skirt hem wet
and I was ankle-deep in the rushing drain.
My knees went weak with tenderness
as your fingers in my hair subsided.
I drove away, your words echoing
"Oh, I was in another world then...",
and the smile that broadened my face
looked back at me from the rear view mirror
as a sun breaking through months of rain.
Being a creature of habit, I was curled up on the couch
dreaming a dream of colours and ribbons against the sky.
At once life's insistent momentum pulled me from reverie.
Motion threw me up against the brilliant solidity of a wall,
as if it were ocean breakers thronging with cyclone strength.
I gasped for breath, and the heaviness of my limbs disappeared.
The receding tide left me flustered, pacing from tile to tile,
much less careful than usual of cracks lurking with omen,
and I couldn't be still - something evil was gnawing at my heels.
Watching the sky, listening to the passing
and passing of cars, the passing of feet,
and of time in the sand on the beach,
I wonder how small I am.
The weight of my body cycles with the moon,
the colour of my hair with the sun's season.
That these things should change me is no surprise.
But for every action there is an equal reaction.
Do my nights of drinking worry the sun's hair grey
and slow the night moon in her orbit?
On the parquet flooring the breeze is low and cool,
curtains float above me on the scent of salt and sea.
I turn my head and think hurried thoughts
that lie themselves next to me in emptiness,
roll over and disappear, leave me to myself again.
The parquet flooring is warmer than some floors I have laid on,
its wood not quite dead having been flogged, drawn and quartered
before lacquer laid it finally in its bed, still toned red like my own
blood.
I turn my head and think more hurried thoughts
that this time do not linger, but float like vapour trails of advertising
until their words despair of a reader and disappear, leave me alone again.
The flooring presses the metal studs of jeans into my flesh,
into the lacquered wood that lies beneath my palms,
but I cannot move for the loneliness that movement might stir.
I turn my head, raise a foreign hand to brush the hair from my eyes,
shift, and the spell is broken. A siren sounds outside,
and sadly I am no longer alone.
Flooding comes quick,
dramatic with lightning's thrusts,
harsh with a cruel brilliance
that leaves blackened tracks of pain,
digs ragged holes
in sweet spring mists and memories,
lines them with cruel stakes,
and loss that has me falling forever over nothing.
Thrown to passion's quick hand,
my lover's brown skin stretches to breaking,
and the claws that make me bite
fill my heart with horror, drive me to flight;
up under thunderheads
riddled with static and ice shards that sting
until wings whittled from the fabric of despair
lift me clear, and I am weightless, freed.
After showing me how to swing a golf club,
you walked me out into the street
under a huge two tone umbrella,
and the sound of heavy rain on nylon
made me smile in spite of myself.
I couldn't get the key to work the car door;
my shaking fingers betrayed me,
and the slick metal handle felt so foreign
when all I wanted to touch was
your warm skin, and the cotton of your clothes.
Through the spokes of the umbrella
our eyes soft-focussed 'til I drew breath
crossed my fingers, and put my lips on yours;
once, twice and again a little deeper
until the noise of the rain was forgotten.
By the time I found myself again
my bare feet were cold and skirt hems wet
from standing in the rushing rain.
My knees went weak with tenderness
as your fingers in my hair subsided.
I drove away, your words echoing
"Oh, I was in another world then...",
and the smile that broadened my face
looked back at me from the rear view mirror
as a sun breaking through months of rain.
From the front it was an ancient crumbling house,
rose coloured, with shutters hanging skewed
and tin roof failing beneath gravity's weight.
Inside were twin bath tubs of green marble
lying side by side and clean in soiled surrounds.
They echoed of some silent marriage long dead.
The rooms rambled into each other, broad and crooked,
falling suddenly into unexpected corners,
ending in faded carpets and cluttered with refuse.
Three horses stood in the yard, shaded by trees.
Lazy clouds of flies followed as they wandered,
one by one in line, down to a brown sluggish river.
The musty smells of decrepit wood and paper
hung on the verandah like curtains of mildew,
closing me in, closing foul traffic noise out.
In shade and solitude,
a mouse-haired girl fritters pages and pages
in vain attempts to catch the love that weaves
mist-like and vaporous through her garden.
Across the room
a cricket lies hidden in a curtain fold across the window
singing his ardent fullness to her sleeping ears,
wishing at once he were human and could calm her woe.
SHE SAID "AS LONG AS YOU CAN BEAR THE LONELINESS"
On the parquet flooring the breeze
is low and cool, curtains float above me
on the scent of salt and sea.
I turn my head and think hurried thoughts
that lie next to me in emptiness, roll over
and disappear, leave me to myself again.
The parquet flooring is warmer than some
floors I have laid on, its wood not quite dead,
having been flogged, drawn and quartered
before lacquer laid it finally in its bed,
still toned red like my own blood.
I turn my head and think more hurried
thoughts that this time do not linger,
but float like vapour trails until their words
despair of a reader and disappear,
leave me alone again.
The flooring presses the metal studs
of jeans into my flesh, into the lacquered
wood that lies beneath my palms,
but I cannot move for the loneliness
that movement might stir.
I turn my head, raise a foreign hand
to brush the hair from my eyes. Shift,
and the spell is broken. Siren sounds
outside, and sadly I am no longer alone.
Brilliance; further, beyond - just darkness.
White radiance; cool rays mirrored by far moons.
Ganymede's hidden sea
encrusted with flourished light and cadence
catches Callisto's millennial eye.
She sighs.
Brilliance; and further, daydreamings of delight.
Darkness; a cushioned bed of sleep,
restlessness, desire.
A sea that ebbs and flows,
flows and ebbs with water's weight.
He sighs.
Brilliance; further, what can there be but despondence?
Winter
In winter, the long-limbed rays of sun skin crystle trees,
headlights masquerade behind frosted glass,
and in cooled valleys the voices of birds are muted,
somehow furled against wind's icy bite.
Early morning, I sit in my night-frigid car for long moments,
listening to the nervous purring of her still-child intestines,
and watching the high golden sun-line on the hills,
as far from dripping honey-warmth on me as summertime.
And the coldness of the air is not the wind-chill of Earth's breath,
nor is the pinch of frozen water, or the shiver in my fingertips;
but the hunger of the void of space, chilled Pluto's grasping at life,
the blinding dark that resides outside the hearth of my home.
While the tinder-arc of Mercury sizzles in eternal summer sun,
Europa's icy crust sips solar rays with unrelenting glacial thirst,
taking that little sun that would warm my toes this morning
and bring waiting jonquils to fragrant surface bloom.
Standing in the dark outside your house,
mosquitoes ravenous on bare legs
making you wallaby skip.
Cool clouds covering hot afternoon summer.
Rustling possums in undergrowth,
looking, laughing, along with kookaburras.
It was that feeling I always get with you,
not wanting to leave without touching you,
my heart in my throat and
reaching out towards you.
Our arms meeting in wrist-lock,
lips in fresh love-lock,
eyes slitted half-closed.
At parting you smiled and said
Hotlips.
Falling asleep to moonlight's touch and late breezes,
even our feet not touching, but close; and then
waking in slow death of dawn's darkness
to see your foreign face come clearer;
stirring, breathing, on verge of waking;
and I cannot help but reach out to touch
your hair, just your hair,
so that you do not feel the shake in my fingers,
the sick rippling in my belly;
the softness of my hankering and fear.
Without opening your eyes (dawn's rise quick now)
you place one palm on my forearm;
and I feel in my own hesitation your tremor;
some even thrill from deep in primal source.
Melted, I roll into arm lock, tension lost
to be caught up by a million muscles
whose fibre your breathless caress ignites
and whose quiver laughs along with morning's birdsong.
Here's a thought for you. A man's new child by his wife is named after his
lover. Carolina.
Swinging long brown hair and beautiful eyes, as any man's lover is
described. In conflict with his neat, quiet, staid and conservative wife.
When does one become the other? Is it some strange magic of the marriage bed
whereby the metamorphosis is completed by sunrise and desire slowly begins
to ebb between the couple? Never to be known, and so we should continue.
Carolina was one of many, and yet to his eyes she stood a little apart,
perhaps a little taller, the way she laughed at what he said, the way her
eyes would fold downwards shy, coy and teasing. Whether it was the time in
his life that she first passed by his office door, the dissatisfaction with
whatever the paper passing across his desk achieved, his marital loneliness
and pretended domestic bliss, it's hard to say. Even in retrospect, there
are no words that will unmake the rumpled bed that they shared, first only
now and again, then more and more.
His lies grew, and his wife's silent pleas for his avowed promises to be
fulfilled were never heard. The front door of his own home became a stranger
to him, demanding more of him than he could deliver, and he hoped against
hope that the mistress of her empty castle would be sleeping before he
arrived home. Wordlessness and matter of need meant she pretended she
slumbered soundly, not wanting to see the way his eyes danced away from
hers, the deceit dripping from his lips like ugly black tar.
Carolina would lie in her bed, naked and spent, and beg him to stay with her
the night, just the night, just tonight. But he left her again and again
until the torture of it pained on her empty arms and left her unfulfilled
and lost in the world of love that could only come alive in her mind. She
never thought that he didn't love her enough to leave that silent, ghostly
marriage that manacled him to panic whenever he glanced at the clock.
One night, late, but no later than usual (for his habit had grown past
weekly to often), he found his wife sitting up, waiting in the lounge, the
mute television's light flickering on her ghostly face, her eyes wide, clear
and frightening. He stopped at the sight of her, but could not speak. The
silence was old and deep between them, hard to break.
"I went to the doctor today," she said, her voice small, like a
child's in
the empty room.
He did not understand her words. He simply stared at her as if it was the
first time he had seen her perhaps since the day she had answered,
foolishly, yes; was seeing the moments of warmth between them, twisted
through overlaid memory's eyes to tiny drops in a sea of pressure and pain.
"I'm pregnant." She spat the word at him, her mouth twisted into a
sneer,
and the hand lying across her belly took on a whole new meaning as he looked
at the thinness of her boned fingers, grown old under his cruelty.
He still stood, but loosed his tie about his collar, brief case in hanging
hand, unable to speak, unable to think, blinded and deafened by the sight of
her suddenly in front of him. Demanding his attention.
He moved his head, dropped his eyes to one side, still not seeing,
overwhelmed again with the scents of love-making and filled with guilt. Then
he breathed a little, surprising himself with the action.
She stared at him, considering her mistake, her misplaced trust of him, the
love that once bloomed for him quashed now by sleeplessness and lone
rantings of hatred. He became nothing to her heart as he stood. The silence
had clasped its long fingers around him and squeezed him until he had to
make a sound, speak a word, form the first moment of reconciliation or run
like the wind.
"Pregnant...," he said, his voice feeling foriegn in his throat, not
feeling
the meaning of the word. "But how...?" His eyes grasped hers again,
looking
for a way out, an escape from his trauma.
"Perhaps it was that wonderful facade of a birthday you gave me." she
said
caustically, suddenly, her neatness ruffled, her eyes afire.
"It's mine?" The words were out before he had thought them.
She stood and left the room, unable to give vent to her fury until it was
fully grown. As her temper exploded within her, she slammed the bedroom door
behind her, the soft carpet poison between her toes.
Still, he didn't move. Her absence from the room changed nothing. He felt
his hand move to the knot at his throat, tugging, loosening, but bringing no
relief. Silence still. His eyes turned to the muted television. Late night
actors danced surreal across his mind. He was transfixed by them, and the
numbness the cathode brought a welcome relief in his weakness.
The hand clasped around the handle of his briefcase loosened and he was
suddenly relieved of the weight of his day. The case hit the floor with a
thud, spilling its old paper guts across the floor. A flicker of concern
knocked on his consciousness, but he turned his attention away.
He ran his hand through his hair, feeling the ridiculous vanity of gel. It
was for Carolina that he used it. It made him feel younger, more decisive.
To slick back his hair in the mirror gave him the life of a gangster for
just a moment.
As he brought his hand from his head, he looked at it in disbelief, as if
only then, at that moment, he had found where he was. He saw the man's hand
that had replaced the child's hand he once had. He saw the wedding band that
he had so willingly ignored, and was mesmerised by its solidity, its
goldeness.
*******
Upstairs she cradled her belly. A child! What a strange, unfathomable thing
had come to her. As she quietened her sobs, she listened for sounds
downstairs, wondering what he would do. Wondering if he was indeed still in
the house at all. She heard the sound of his case hit the floor and
sharpened her ears for more, sardonically pleased that they finally had
something to talk about.
Unconciously, her hand moved across her belly, tracing elipses across the
rounded dome, feeling the smooth texture of the warm skin, already soothing
the life that had begun, uninvited and unlikely, in her blood.
Steve slumped on the couch, feeling but not feeling, digesting the knowledge
that had been slapped across his face. He would let Carolina go. He knew the
breath of change, and could feel it in his face. Breathing in he called her,
talking so that his quietened wife upstairs would be listening.
"Hello?"
She answered and breathed the love they enjoyed through the wires to him
again. The sweetness of her voice tore at his heart, and her desire for him
gutted him to the very core.
"Look, umm.... I can't do this anymore," he said, sounding weak and
undecided, almost believing that he could continue with her.
"My wife is having... my wife and I...," he said as both women
listened in
breathless silence. "We ... well, we are having a baby."
The finality of the words sliced through the air, outside down the shining
wire, cutting across quiet city blocks with terrible certainty, under the
feet of sleeping birds who did not listen, but minded their own affairs
instead, and landed in Carolina's ear.
"I love you," he whispered to her. "I love you." And as a
bubble of tears
rose in her throat, he broke the connection.
*********
The child came soon and healthy, and the bond that it brought to the house
was a gusting change that swept so much away. Neither parent had time to
think, and for a year the baby demanded attention, grew, gurgled and
blossomed.
It was only at first in the hospital, standing by the bedside with father's
pride in hand, that the spectre of his beautiful lover managed to cross the
barrier of the new family he had found.
"It's a girl," they had said. And, after thinking for but a little
while,
his wife looked at him with eyes dissolved in softness and delight and said
"Can we call her Carolina?"
As his knees weakened beneath him, he could do nothing but nod.