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    Angles
    Angles
    Angles
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    Angles

    By Carmel Macdonald Grahame and Karen Throssell

    ()

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    About this ebook

    'With freedom of movement and association seriously curtailed during lockdown, Carmel Macdonald Grahame and Karen Throssell found instead an opportunity for liberty of mind - to recollect, richly embroider, and feel into other lives and vistas. This book showcases the agile creativity - dress-up boxes of the imagination - of these two eloquent p

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGinninderra Press
    Release dateNov 21, 2022
    ISBN9781761094231
    Angles
    Author

    Carmel Macdonald Grahame

    Carmel Macdonald Grahame is a Western Australian teacher and writer now living in Warrandyte, Victoria. Carmel has previously lived in Canada, London and Korea. Her short fiction, poetry, critical essays and reviews have been published in journals, periodicals and anthologies in Australia and in North America, and she has had three stage plays performed. She has a PhD in Australian literature, and for several years taught courses in literature and creative writing at secondary and tertiary levels in her home state of Western Australia. Personal Effects is her debut novel.

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      Book preview

      Angles - Carmel Macdonald Grahame

      Angles

      ANGLES

      CARMEL MACDONALD GRAHAME

      KAREN THROSSELL

      Ginninderra Press

      Angels

      ISBN 978 1 76109 423 1

      Copyright © text Carmel Macdonald Grahame

      and Karen Throssell 2022

      Cover: Bry Throssell

      All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

      First published 2022 by

      Ginninderra Press

      PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015

      www.ginninderrapress.com.au

      CONTENTS

      Angles

      Acknowledgements and Author Notes

      ANGLES

      Calendar

      January always begins, like an eldest,

      time starting with fireworks and kisses,

      first of the first, standing over the year,

      arms folded, laying claim to old ideas

      about fresh starts and good intentions,

      like a pastor assigning annual penance,

      to which I objected conscientiously, well

      before resolutions sounded like wish lists.

      Anniversary month for us, of long ago

      antique vows, made with fingers crossed.

      Although, these days when he leaves

      I miss him as much as then, but absence

      creates unexpected possibilities, like time

      to be sitting here sifting through language

      that might describe this window light –

      ambitious words, I want; precise, clear.

      Which is why, at a nondescript minute,

      I happen to be in this chair looking out

      at this view, thesaurus open at lucid,

      hearing this plane as it passes overhead,

      and how this mudbrick cottage creaks…

      I can smell patchouli, my fetish pen leaks –

      all minutiae, but on the strength of which

      another year has started climbing over me.

      Carmel

      Pretending to be Slow Loris

      Limbo month, life on hold or upside down normally

      bustling inland towns suburbs empty vacant void vacuous

      they’ve left for the coast or hiding hibernating hunkering down in or on couches with cricket or cocktails drowsing dreaming or drunk

      Where is all that panting traffic weary schoolkids at bus stops heads down tapping tapping? Local haunts shut stunning shocked patrons: no coffee library gym no friends all on the beach with the plumber mechanic sparky all of whom you need of course in January when even the machines go slow go on strike or surrender

      Now once quiet coastal towns become swarming cities – roads footpaths cafés bustling jostling tiny shops chock full of eager shoppers street swarming with swanning strangers with their bare flesh sunglasses and ubiquitous phones…

      January metamorphosis – city shell sloughed-off suits ties heels stockings – and underneath glum uniforms waiting to emerge are summer butterflies! Pink and red and green and orange

      sundresses shorts frocks spread their wings, thongs slap happily

      But unlike other butterflies who emerge gorgeous energised full of flighty excitement we emulate the languorous slow loris – slow down slow melt slow food fold flop flump sleep in and on beaches lounges decks with our Xmas books holiday movies and endless repeats of Grand Designs

      We can smell the roses or resolve to smell the roses or at least notice the roses but all the time rose-blindness lurks in a corner of our minds the work corner still there despite all that slow loris drift and waft it’s there poised waiting…

      These days even more insidious

      little pocketful at beaches cafés walking trails

      all full of holiday pretenders work blinking bleeping bullying…insistently reminding them of their real lives bustling away in their beach bags backpacks pockets…

      A pocketful of meetings agendas memos discussion papers risk assessments quotes appraisals training schedules performance reviews Quality Control Best Practice…

      A pocketful of spoilers – twitching chafing

      quietly sabotaging slow loris

      Karen

      Black Is…

      what Renoir called queen of colours,

      beyond indigo, out past the spectrum,

      where light is not and rainbows switch off;

      a cliché of magic, vampires, witches’ cats;

      shades of intellectuals and existentialists;

      hallmark of modernity, elegance, restraint;

      manifest as Doc Martens, pointy-toed patents,

      crepe, lace, velvet; little-dress proverbial

      like satin sheets on antique beds and raven hair;

      lustrous as ebony and jet; key to sharps and flats

      and half a game of chess; shape-taking darkness

      in the ecliptic silhouettes of mountains, trees;

      sombre as funeral suits and widow’s weeds,

      but well-worn as leathers astride a Harley,

      a warrior belt, the eye that follows the fist;

      found in ocean trenches and underground,

      the stuff of caves and mines preceding signs

      of tunnel-ending light; growls as bleak despair;

      the gravely named lost-box of airline tragedy;

      that which fills holes in galaxies, astronomical

      dark matter, those elusive enigmatic WIMPS*…

      but down to earth as lists, plagues, markets;

      often worn, still, for burying a loved one,

      and in mourning, enduring symbol of grief;

      and now, what will spill into this waiting house

      at dead of night, when in the end I leave it.

      But first: this pen, this ink.

      Carmel

      (* Weakly Interacting Massive Particles in Space)

      Black

      Once whispering green, rustic ochre,

      Elegant marble and solid sandstone – transformed:

      Torched rubble, scorched wasteland, ashen obliteration

      Funeral garb, homage to the colour of sorrow.

      We wear the grave, the endless night

      We are memory’s dark shadows

      Dogs, or the one that hounds

      you drags you down into that pit

      Black as no colour – when colour is joy

      Stealth fills the midnight room. A nothing so thick

      you can’t feel the walls

      Tunnels, caves – no edges, no end…

      No colours any more, I want them to turn black

      Thunder is black:

      Cannon roar, war drums

      Coal and oil, old friends turned dark threat

      Cities seethe with it – a huddle of black

      Funeral gear for the deathly office

      Cool uniforms for conformity and camouflage

      The soothing balm of dark

      after day’s white heat

      City lights obliterated, snuffing out pretence

      Slinking panthers, sleek stallions, glossy bears,

      whip slither of black snakes

      purple/black of prancing bower birds

      Epitome of elegance, style

      Minimal, functional – a wide-brimmed hat

      and that little dress

      The black skin of our first peoples

      disparaged by pink invaders

      whose skin blisters and peels under the blackfella sun

      Black was the colour of my true love’s hair

      The colour of mystery and magic

      Old women stirring healing potions

      with their friends – cats, bats and crows…

      If there were no black night

      there would be no new dawn

      and you would never see the stars

      Karen

      You Yangs*

      for Patrick

      Startling aberration sprawling on the edge of that flat plain,

      mystically looming, like an arm’s length Hanging Rock

      He loved the name, it had to mean something significant

      to the local Wathaurong, had to be a creation tale, a fallen star

      pushed out of heaven and turned into an ugly lump,

      an Icarus star, punished for flying too high…

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