The first Poem of the Month for 2024, selected by 2024 Anthology editors Ivan Rehorek (Avalanche) and Martha Landman is Yes by Robbie Lennard. The commended poem is Justin Fordham by Barbara Preston.
Yes
Robbie Lennard
Yes you may come for tea this Saturday
please arrive at half-past-ten for elevenses
then at eleven we’ll celebrate high noon –
… please bring your own silver spoon
please wear a white dress
bring no didgeridoos
no emu-feathered shoes
bring the last of your kind
bring a game of mastermind
we’ll play that
and backgammon too
scrabble for a chess-set
and a dog or two
and my man
how is your tribe these days?
pass another lamington
and tell me if it’s true
that there are in fact some of you left
somewhere up in the Hills –
maybe just a few …
I hear Tommy Walker and his lubra
are out beyond the foothills
down Lake Alexandrina way
in a smeared and distorted depiction
that we should put up on display
anyway
welcome
Billy
welcome Black Betty
Witchetty and the rest
we welcome you to our home
we really feel quite blessed –
thanks for all the flint and artefacts
have some more damper
some more English Breakfast tea
put another shrimp on the barbie
have a piece of carrot cake
some orange-chocolate confectionery
yes yes yes
and may I just say
we really do enjoy your company
you Kaurna folk are the best
we admire your tenacity
we’re glad you came
to our place
for tea
and when Roger
Rabbie
and Robbie
one day make a trip to an Adelaide gallery
they’ll see us all smiling here
and yes
they’ll see a mob of colonialists vote NO
some Palestinians waving flags at a rally
and yes
as white men –
they’ll see it all for free
Justin Fordham
Barbara Preston
A childhood of RAF camps
postings overseas,
with houses of monotonous sameness,
as normal as corn flakes to us kids,
the dull camps our safe after-school meeting places,
our noisy playgrounds that stretched into long summer evenings,
the uniformity of comfort
as school friends, towns, counties changed constantly.
An unusual offer from a schoolmate one day
to look at his microscope,
drew me to an unfamiliar part of the nearby town,
a quiet street where every house was different.
His large, with shiny bay windows,
a neat, flowery garden sloping to the street.
No mother greeted us, just a chiming doorbell,
the afternoon sun captured in the bevelled mirrors,
cut-glass vases and ornaments setting alight the sitting room
dust-free furniture whispering “don’t touch me.”
Why had he asked me here, this quiet boy I hardly knew?
His name, ‘Justin Fordham’ as neat and tidy as he was,
he sat beside me in the front row of the classroom with the others
chosen by someone, somewhere, to succeed.
There was a ticking clock somewhere in the house
but I heard only the silence,
and knew somehow, that though full of light and beauty,
the neat perfection had caught his body and mind in a trap,
his pale freckled face, red hair and delicate tortoiseshell glasses
held like a specimen under a microscope, a rare ornament preserved in time,
the slowly moving hand of the clock catching each long hour
then reluctantly letting it go,
the minute hand faster, but just as interminable;
day after every perfect day.