After Work, and: A Place of Lichen, and: A Front Approaches

After Work

for C.K. Williams

Not long after getting in
the brother noticed
the lace around her bra
as it dried on the rack
in front of the fire;
he asked her why
she needed lace
when it could do
nothing to support her;
from whom do we get
our ill-shaped genitalia?
he asked primly.
Something alive
in the ceiling
and the moon lipoid
through open blinds,
off-colour in the firelight.
Caked with dirt
from the ploughing,
the tractor pushed hard
for one more season,
he scratched at his food.
Today, at the pharmacy,
a woman bought
a breast-pump . . .
the fire needed more wood,
the light weak
and the coals vicarious.
What's that? Sounds kinky.
Oh, not really, some women
use them to draw milk,
so the bub can take
it from a bottle.
They'd both been
formula babies,
their mother drying up
straight away, then
dead in the ground
with their father -
just outside, low down
where the mist gets going
and the going gets tough.

A Place of Lichen

Grizzled on rocks and trees
a lukewarm green like a brand
of house-paint - a fad
long faded from the market; cladding
painted over, patios trained,
brought to order. A paint
that crackles with the heat,
peels and flakes with cold. Behaves
adversely in sunlight. A skin disorder,
a surface feint, epidermal quackery,
clustering about an area of wear:
elbow, knee, the code
lost by its creator.

A Front Approaches

Clear. Flowering gums strobe red, quick
  with the breeze. The phthalo blue
    sky makes silhouettes
    of mountain, trees.
The glow offensive, the light screws

subcutaneous, burns roots:
  the sharp black-faced cuckoo-shrike
    committed to that
    dead-limb pivot -
cantilevered, gyroscopic

legs working below body,
  to touch the edge of the front,
    driven up askew
    as darkly through
leaf-swatches it charts its ascent.