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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781775580775 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| File size: | 175 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Get Some
By Sonja Yelich
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2008 Sonja YelichAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-077-5
CHAPTER 1
The Texaco Star
Edgar lay on his bed and said
The Texaco Star had a lot to do with the way
he thought about the world –
I have so many germs. I am too young to slaughter.
I wish there was a dime for every day I woke.
Outside his window Jess next door
waited for her party to arrive in sad ribbons
& the truck weaving along the boulevard
laden with a deflated bouncy castle
turned into her drive.
The Texaco Star blinked from across the road and Ed thought more about
the million ways to enlist than the price of gas.
CH2 Enlisting
Mom was very patriotic. Always flying those pooky flags from things.
In the mall once a Marine shook hands with my brother –
which Mom engineered.
He knelt down to Edgar and said hullo son, what's your name?
Edgar nearly crapped himself right there in his little shorts.
* * *
Mom kept a neat house. Sure, we fought.
Even in first grade he spat at other kids.
Give me a buck or I'll ...
* * *
We had back issues of all The Sopranos
which we called that Sub-Culture Show on HBO
& we stood together in the small parlour airguitarring –
Woke up this morning and got myself a gun.
* * *
And then he came home one day and said
Mom – I'm all joined up.
Kevlar
I stuck my kevlar out to a blue-day & date palms.
I held a gun in the usual way but I forget big time what home looks like.
Tonight in the village I will hand out soccer balls
to children who will ask for dollars instead.
And the animal husbandry of wandering dogs will chase our
wheels like they were rabbits or hybrid cats.
I am fed up sleeping standing up & I have had it
with not knowing & always having to watch
around the back of my neck.
The Head
From looking at my brother you wouldn't pick out
anything dodgy. There is the careful way his hair sits in
loops when it is longer or tufts more clumps now that he
has begun cutting it himself. I am going for the shave off
soon he says. It will be good to see my skull for the first
time in the shape it was when I was born. I will be domey.
Some Guy In Kentucky
I was first & he was second. He is
Edgar & I am much smaller in stature.
We did the usual stuff & I got Pac-Man
off eBay from some guy in Kentucky.
For my earliest memory of us as a pair
he could piss further & I had Battleships
& Battlestar Galactica.
He could build a go-kart
from a lawnmower. Being a reader I often
watched him crash from the words.
Renal
I covered the shooting of Abe Rollet in the kidneys.
Coming from largely a religious family of crosses
& scriptures – he smelled.
His parents bought a gun from a man at Costellano's
Pizzeria. Which is also where they placed a regular
Friday order.
Abe is errant & slaps around the neighbourhood like
a small yellow dog. So his parents called him up on the mobile.
And waited on the sofa with exactly Terror & Sorrow.
Now here's youth for you.
Abe turns up with his boxers half out his jeans
covered in ernie & berts.
Creak by pleas he fell.
And his younger brother agreed that maybe Afghanistan
for all its dust was not a good place to've turned 21.
And anyway – bathing was problematic.
Smelling
I was a small wooden baby who you
could see in the photos wrapped up tight
from the black & white of day & night.
Most babies will forget the colour of the street
lights or the wet of cloth nappies. But I was
no easy baby with a nose for the smell of things
& a memory for infancy.
So to everything I attached a smell. The cot while
blue with a yellow duckling had the smell of a cupboard.
The cotsheets the smell of a desert.
And my thumb –
the smell of my mouth.
Right now this hotel lobby has the smell of the comb
of my mother.
Soaps
Edgar is the smell of soap. Johnson's. Burtons. Roper Original.
Soap on a Rope. Lucky Robin. Sweetmans & Portello Ltd. He is happy washing
down his body two times daily.
The Visual Person
Has an eye out for the pictures. They are right there
for the roadkill. They are in the rubble looking for a leg.
The more blood on the shop window & the toes of a child
the better. The Marine kitted out. The gas mask. The Visual
Person thinks best in colour with one sentence underneath.
The Smell Person
Children are smell led. Before they eat
the food gets raised to the holes of their nose
where they sniff test first.
Adults have lost that ability and rely deeply on the label.
I can smell fire & I can smell people lying.
Because Edgar always had the smell of soap I figured there
must be something he was hiding.
The Audio Person
The Audio People are everywhere. They are the ones who yell
things through the traffic to the person on the other side of the road
over the car stereo boxing on. An Audio Person talks non stop & does
not need to see you or lip read. The Audio People strap a radio to their
left ear to connect up with the right brain. They are sifting through
the newsreaders & predicting the next car bomb. In a bar The Audio
Person is the one who will most likely mimic and not listen.
The Shorthand Person
I was a Shorthand Person for a year. When people phoned me
I held the receiver with one hand and squiggled the words mid-air
with the other. The guy beside me in Pitman Shorthand Class
For The Novice asked me what was the point of making small
bastards out of words. Weren't we better off using a tape recorder?
He was an audio learner – now in radio.
CH13 One Small Cake
Each day is the same as the last crap one before it.
And each day I wish for a bath. I wish for a shower head.
I wish for the simplicity of steam & a clean towel.
Today I would like the possibility of soap. One
small cake to take off the dirt. To re-wash my shoulder
tatt bright green. To clean off the sound
of a bullet & all the people I have whacked.
Dreaming of the showers at the gym I closed my eyes
& could smell my life as it was –
once a-Christmas-ago when I was a clean
lie-about-the-house sort of guy.
Some Guy From Brooklyn
Edgar had a great collection of all the
Starsky & Hutches because he was a fan of the '70s
& a cardigan from the programme minus
the acrylic waist sash –
but he got in with some guy from Brooklyn
& traded the lot for an assault rifle.
Its trapdoor stock and bayonet lug
were broke but it came with a GI Cleaning Kit.
Edgar said it didn't matter any that the
tactical nylon sling was fraying.
CH15 A LOT
Edgar was in line for many careers
including anything from building sheds, demolition, yard clearance
or car maintenance – & that might include cleaning upholstery, panel &
paint touch-ups, wheel alignment, home tuning, oil filter restoration and fan
belt repairs.
* * *
Straight out mechanical was not him. Nor roofing.
But because of the guy from Brooklyn & the assault rifle
he thought about the regimental military A LOT and about setting goals.
And what the desert might look like at night under the stars & date palms.
The interior of a Humvee & the hunting of soldiers intrigued him immensely.
That Winter The Axe Was The Story
I told people see that there axe –
it's badluck all the way from the day
it was got from the hardware.
I saw my family take out
that axe in an afternoon often
& the chickens never knew
what was coming and the running
they did –
& how they ran in neon and
the white dog barking out his life
next door.
Over there in the garage
with its power tools & pitch forks
is the very stone it was ground on.
Many chickens sped over the
concrete floor and through to a decreasing
yellow of buttercups
winding up plucked & of nil head eventually –
small slaughters of the ugly feet.
Peckers. Losers.
And I remember a coiling winter Ed
took to the boy next door Bartlet
with the exact axe I am holding now –
in memoriam the willow handle.
His aim was close & they broke glass
& teeth & Bartlet's mother was loud.
And you could hear the triangle of voices
& the beech trees
clapping.
The scattering of chickens was delicious
& some never came back –
finally making it in the real world.
12 years later in Australia
his yamaha looped under a truck
& his path was red & he circled there for a while.
Edgar said it was the Omen of the Chickens
& their payback.
Lay
She is in the hotel lobby with a message.
I pull up by bus and she is nice to my eyes.
The French Riviera & Saint-Tropez come to mind
where I had good bagels & a lay.
Reuters she says –
pleased to meet you.
CH18 Foxholes – Nooses
There was no accident to the amount of whoredom
she could afford to try at night in the morning or
afternoon say in front of a TV screen probably or laptop.
* * *
The Logic never stacked up &
outside the Hotel was the usual pandemonium
of traffic & a killer wind going on & the crush of the day.
* * *
It is red & with pleasure how many places
the legs can bend & together.
So she took it plumbed from every right angle
in honey & fractured harmony
* * *
until she got bored.
* * *
Through the heat of the days
who blended into weeks or however long
things are she'd wait to rope them in.
* * *
Each morning to her door The Tribune
or Daily or Herald would arrive in its
black & white captions & coloured shots
of Marine hellfire.
* * *
Over the euphrates smoke rose –
& people were being driven from their
homes & minds. A Cobra Chopper
up & fell. The day was an accident.
* * *
By night she noticed each Hotel Suite
looked more like a Foyer than before
& all the marbly tiles were mirrors
reflecting the slip & tick of her steps
* * *
where nouns would shloop into view –
a Lone Corporate Cab or Executive Taxi
& Dim Lobbies with their sunk couches &
Martinis – where she might venture.
* * *
& lightly she would address each Receptionist
or Cleaner with patience & the fluid trick of linguistics.
to wait for a key a room a number & a swipe
card for the power.
* * *
Lo & tall – she'd enter to a fridge with its mixes
a bed in King, cupboards, drawers, nuts & small
bars of mint & baby champagne.
* * *
Where she'd log on to Embeds
whose risks were photos & handfuls
of words of insurgents or injuries.
Foxholes & Nooses.
* * *
Who she'd call up or dial
through the stars through
the satellite dishes right through the stratosphere to there –
the middle sandy east nestled into the Marines' necks –
in squadrons & battalions & Lexus Tanks.
* * *
Time is a cheap Dove.
& the room had matching bathrobes on hooks or knobs
in white in pairs in dual velour.
* * *
& when she slept it was near the middle of the bed
in ravish sheets of JetStream shades –
the room was hot with its whirring screens
some guardian inches of robert fisk &
her nakedness
* * *
at 23.41 she flicked into Dreams.
Puny
Me & Edgar hunted puny squirrel with a cook's knife.
Edgar took to carrying flow soap in his pocket because
of the rabies prospect. I said it was more if you got bit
or if the animal had froth.
We hunted his infant teacher who didn't know she was being
hunted. She had the smell of books with dust jackets &
hormones. It was the first time Edgar said you could
hunt just about anything living providing you kept your
footsteps secret.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Get Some by Sonja Yelich. Copyright © 2008 Sonja Yelich. 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
Title Page,Dedication,
Epigraph,
1 The Texaco Star,
2 Enlisting,
3 Kevlar,
4 The Head,
5 Some Guy In Kentucky,
6 Renal,
7 Smelling,
8 Soaps,
9 The Visual Person,
10 The Smell Person,
11 The Audio Person,
12 The Shorthand Person,
13 One Small Cake,
14 Some Guy From Brooklyn,
15 A LOT,
16 That Winter The Axe Was The Story,
17 Lay,
18 Foxholes – Nooses,
19 Puny,
20 Everyday my heart ...,
21 When Mail Is All You've Got,
22 There is no point ...,
23 In The Beginning,
24 A Nothin,
25 Room With A View,
26 Adriana,
27 The Little Blue Car,
28 And Canada Salmon,
29 Get Some,
30 Civilians,
31 Less,
32 Blow,
33 Stacee,
34 Torsos,
35 Framing The Shots,
36 Mom – no amount of yellow ribbon ...,
37 Hummer,
38 Lara Croft,
39 Hazchem,
40 Hockey & Ed,
41 Man X,
42 Paraphernalia,
43 Carnival,
44 Epaulets,
45 Such As,
46 The Toyota Allegory,
47 Doody,
48 Bells Down,
49 Black Hawk Down,
50 T-shirts,
Notes and acknowledgements,
Copyright,