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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781775588467 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/28/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 120 |
| File size: | 806 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Beside Herself
By Chris Price
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2016 Chris PriceAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86940-846-6
CHAPTER 1
AFTER PLATO
Days like these I'm squandering the circle
riding out on my hobby-horse, my long-nosed
metal detector, on a jaunty tangent
to forage among weeds.
Past the last of the smoking utilities
I saunter, humming an irrational
number by a latter-day monk.
There's still some ground
out here that's good for a
good-for-nothing, an in-
betweener neither fish
nor flesh, parboiled detective,
diviner of shoots and nuts
and bullets spent under the dust.
A picker-up and turner-over,
debt-collector magnetised
by scrap and straggly growth,
against-the-grain survival of
perversity in adversity. It all goes
in my sack for due consideration
later, but today I aim to go
too far. I reach the limits
and approach the wire, where
the corpulent border guard in blue
doesn't shift from his post. I seen you coming,
kid, he says, and waves me ominously
through. Just keep moving — don't stop
till I can see the back of you.
TANGO WITH MUTE BUTTON
from my stationary position on
the exercycle at the glass wall of
the fitness studio I look down
on their silent tango as it drifts
repeatedly across the gym floor's
gleaming tongue and groove two lovers
learning chess their moves are hesitant
but synchronous she crooks her knee and
offers up an ankle to be lifted
into the saddle then rocks back to allow
him to reflect her gambit they rook and pawn
and king and queen their way around
the empty room while up above
the poem sits engaged only
from the neck up going nowhere from
the hips down as I wonder how
to mitigate its seemingly inexorable
descent into sentimental pentameter
and some cliché of the narrator's own
inadequacy versus the wordless charm
of dancers well fuck it some of us
are destined to sit on our arses and
rotate and if the lives we didn't lead
remain more beautiful than those
we did then we will have fulfilled that
destiny impeccably which is
as near to checkmate as you'll get
MY FRIEND FLICKA
What was it with the horse
books we all read?
That the horse stood
for the man, or the romance
that would, in time, reduce
to him? Was it that simple,
the golden palomino giving ground
to Robert Redford then the nearest
neck we could get a lariat
round? Lying in bed last night
you asked me what the word
trope meant. I, reading
Cormac McCarthy, said shorthand
for tripwire and rope, turned
the light out, turned over
in the double bed. No animals
harmed in the making.
Sleep well, you said.
TRICK OR TREAT
it's either a fire or a false alarm
either a flash flood or showerhead
it's a black velvet band or death metal collar
an oil peak or a lone star ranger
it's a hot-air balloon or a raft of dead jellyfish
the trail of crumbs or the toasted sandwich
it's the green flash or black spot
the hook or the parrot
the gavotte or the pogo
the marque or the logo
the belt-tightened airway
the snitch in the beltway
hold or sell
kiss or tell
stare or blink
hood or wink —
then
it's
my air-guitar
your whammy-bar
my shell-less crab
your snatch and grab
I gargle you
you hector me
I pluck your carcass
tenderly
you stitch me up
I dress you down
you hook my eye
unpick my gown
you stuff me with horsehair
upholster my armchair
I censor your letters
then tip off your betters
now you've puzzled my bruise
and I've tripped in your shoes
to the beat or the moon
the cow or the tune
so we split down the middle
my dish trumps your fiddle
we're glued then we're broken
all's said and
unspoken
ENTANGLED EPIGRAM
Light writes happiness.
We bury it in earth
then set it alight.
Earth turns black
and liquefies, black sinks
condensing centuries
dwelling on dark until
its obverse hazes into
sight, then rises
into light that burns
through bone — night light —
and out the other side
to draw a diagram
of white on black.
Light writes white.
And happiness? Is
colourless, retreating,
out of sight.
THE VIENNA CONCERT
You've pulled off the highway to have it out at last
in this small lay-by, improbably picturesque
in daylight, you both recall, but tonight the dark
makes a lit box of the ticking car,
the things that bound you — music, booze —
no longer big enough to exclude
your differences. After a difficult pause
it starts to rain, but the windscreen's
dry. You're listening to applause,
the work of many hands in a concert hall,
Vienna, 1991, showering
their praise on two who now fall
silent, their run of luck having found
its exit from felicity, its natural end.
HASTA LA VISTA
Things were fatal but not urgent.
We used more make-up and less speed.
We saw the hectic colour on one side
and the blank space on the other.
What went up came down then drilled its way
metres deep into the earth. Under
the turned table we learned to live
on our own chewing gum
while unfamiliar implements played
dinner music above our heads.
We adapted — it was what we knew
how to do — but the sugar cubes kept
getting smaller. Whereas before
we had been known by name,
now we only crept to the watering holes
under cover of darkness, then sat
with chins on our knees and waited while
the new customers declined our terms
in favour of their own impenetrable
argot. Sign met size and came off
second best, bedding down with lice
and livestock in the basement of
the air we used to own. While
they were busy ransacking
the drawers there was still time to rue
our civilised discontents, but now
the sudden silence impends overthrow.
We stare at one another, suspended
in the pause before the shouting
and splintering Hollywood has, as it
turns out, so well prepared us for,
the breathless interval before our new
lives, hat and coatless in the snow.
THE KINGDOM
The road to the capital was one hundred kilometres
of corpses, each hand-made
with machete and grenade. We passed the flaming wells,
the oil-quenched birds
and the abandoned horses of the royal palace running
mad amid the smoke
and burning trees. Toolmaker par excellence,
nothing makes sense
to me like a catastrophe. Need I say no corpse
will ever make a human? Yes,
the kingdom is now mine, but don't call me
lord — I am the Beast,
I dislike compliments. What pleases me is
vigorous resistance.
It does not come from the domesticated ones
who gladly bear
my presence that I may forget
my ugliness
and so my sights are trained
on bigger game
the creatures that exceed me
in ferocity.
Herdsman of the last great
migration, I
am the one who can't afford to give
or take the slightest pity.
I help them out
of their skins and into history.
ABANDONED HAMLET
My nature adores a vacuum
that's why the skull is my best friend.
She asked, how many deaths to slake
this pain? Painstakingly, I tallied up
the answer: her father's first, then hers
by water. The king, my uncle, and
the queen, my mother. Then I cleaned out
the rest of the nest. I was always
destined for the Russian ending, but
what happens now the play
is over? No sound, and none to hear,
the theatre's black and I
am every character —
every, every character.
A NATURAL HISTORY OF RICHARD
The bones are back —
of the toad that squats
on history.
The bones are talking back.
Their voices echo up
through the swerve of ribs
blown by a fierce unseen wind
into his little s-bound volume
where every minute's irritation
of a frame curtailed
gnawed at the lip
accumulated into infamy.
The bones on horseback
— crookback on swayback —
one shoulder tilting towards
a sword, lofting a desire
to cut the upright
down, the other sloping
towards a raptor's grip
on the reins.
Arisen through bitumen
they insinuate the flesh
that was flung like dead game
across the rump of a show-pony
to parade his stunted form
uncovered, a king's meagre
equipment lolling — maggots
cleaning out a wound
under the winter sun.
For whom, after laying him out
for a season to be seen,
the grey friars made a bed
then laid to rest, the devil's
choirboy, his afterlife confined
by ever-diminishing adjectives.
The back of his skull was
staved by a sharp blade
but the jawbone still gapes
from drinking darkness all
those centuries under
earth, stone, tar until now
the bones are clean
and shining, good
and ready to talk.
DRESSING THE GHOST
Of course his clothes don't fit
no longer even look like him
and the blue light doesn't suit
whatever tone it is his skin
still keeps. Armour him now,
glove him in chainmail, kit him
in something that clanks
and masks the terrible
thin wight within and
doesn't mock his former
fuller self the way his old shirts
and pants now do with their whispering
threadbare gestures, their dull-
eyed buttons hanging limp
on wilted stalks. They have lost
their character, no wonder
they lie, resentful, being left
behind. Armour him now,
so we won't detect the final
disappearing act until
too late — he's slipped
behind the arras, out
to the graveyard and
under the stone
flowing like smoke
into a signature that could
be anyone's, imprinted
by the mason's hand, our
common dress code.
Read the script.
WHEN I AM LAID IN EARTH
When I am laid in earth
this half-life in your mind
is my continuance —
not long, or loud, but
intermittent, like the fault
in the machine that can't
be diagnosed or fixed
by anything but patience,
time, or blind chance; a
break in the static, blip
in the daily traffic that allows
a brief transmission through
from our shared history,
whichever part appealed,
appeals enough to you
to hear it, weeks later
and then months, and years;
what you will hear is what's
essential, true — for you,
who are the quick and thus
the breath of me whose song
has gone to sleep in silence,
but still murmurs when the
trees repeat their leaves
each spring and when
the leaves fade into earth
that I am laid in. I am not
gone until you are.
Remember me.
CODA
At the funeral
or the film
it's always
the music
does you in:
pouring excess
into dry
lines
raising damp
tendrils out
of hard
but friable earth
its cataract
forever falling
caterwauling
into the underworld.
THRESH/HOLD
It looked inviting
that blue promise
so I stepped through
but the door unframed
my thought, unhinged
my indoor-outdoor flow.
Now all's astray, I don't
know why I came or where
to go. I am misplaced,
a left-hand mitten dropped
on concrete, getting
wet, that splits the sense
of keeping warm right
down the middle. I'm
hot and cold, I'm black
and blue, my fine boot on
the other foot but on this one
somebody else's shoe.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beside Herself by Chris Price. Copyright © 2016 Chris Price. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
After Plato,Tango with mute button,
My friend Flicka,
Trick or treat,
Entangled epigram,
The Vienna Concert,
Hasta la vista,
The Kingdom,
Abandoned Hamlet,
A natural history of Richard,
Dressing the ghost,
When I am laid in earth,
Coda,
Thresh/hold,
The Book of Churl,
Wrecker's song,
Paternity test,
Three readers in the Jardin du Palais Luxembourg,
Museum Pieces,
Whip/lash,
A pinch of salt,
Message from the righteous fugitive,
The also-ran,
Possession no. 33,
Beside yourself,
Spell for a child to remember,
The new cuisine,
Appreciation,
My mother as a tree,
Richard Nunns takes tea with Miss Bethell,
Black shanty,
Antipodean,
The audition,
Venera,
To the future,
Dressage lesson,
Acknowledgements,