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    Conversations I've Never Had
    Conversations I've Never Had
    Conversations I've Never Had
    Ebook86 pages47 minutes

    Conversations I've Never Had

    By Caitlin Maling

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    About this ebook

    Caitlin Maling's first collection is at heart a poetry of place. Cervantes, Donnelly River, Yallingup, Fremantle, Leonora, and beyond are richly evoked in poems ranging stylistically from accomplished mature lyrics and the confessional to narratives of raw power and feeling. Restlessly questioning and frequently allusive, slipping between promise and possibility, Maling's poems are invested in the actuality of the world, exploring the landscapes of memory and the brief moment of now.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateFeb 1, 2015
    ISBN9781925162417
    Conversations I've Never Had

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      Book preview

      Conversations I've Never Had - Caitlin Maling

      Directions

      I

      The path to the dam

      Our dads laid the lime-

      stones. We couldn’t lift

      or nudge them with our toes

      because of what we might catch

      under. Like you can’t put your feet

      down the bottom, we were

      too soft for yabbies and you

      never dive from the bank

      because the logs move

      overnight. We kept to the surface,

      struck with water-boatmen –

      sun-skitterish pinpricks of life –

      scattering away from the ripples

      our fingers made. The year

      they laid the path, my father

      lived elsewhere and I

      put my head under

      for the first time,

      past the warm spot,

      swam deep,

      it was so dark

      and so cold,

      there was no

      way up.

      To Robert Thompson

      When you and I were ten you killed the baby.

      I learnt about it on the radio

      on the way to a Power Rangers birthday party.

      That night, I drank Coke with the sugar left in

      and we girls ran little pink circles

      around each other for hours, only coming together

      to cut to pieces someone’s older brother.

      Walking my little sister to school

      the day after seeing you on the television,

      I practised hardening my hands, tried picturing

      her fingers as prison bars I had to break. For years

      we would walk past a half-demolished home

      the yard littered with stones like frags.

      And for many days trying to feel the weight

      of that brick in my hand

      I developed imaginary callouses.

      Now you and I have grown up together,

      but I’m still not at that point

      where I can take your mind in mine,

      feel that little hand you felt pulling away

      and only tighten my grip in response.

      Sundays

      waiting

      for my father

      to be late home

      from surfing

      my mother

      would cut the sky

      to ribbons

      she would take

      her sewing outside

      and lay it on

      the glass table

      and with the kitchen scissors

      tear silver

      through the fabric

      I would lie

      under the table

      and with

      each precise injury

      the cloth

      bled sunlight

      all over me

      she was always

      one of the

      wise women

      from the end of the world

      picking apart

      all she

      created

      she would never

      turn her head

      to see

      if he had

      come through the door

      Donnelly River, 13

      On the diving board above the dank dam water

      Luke’s lifting up my bikini top again.

      A Ceauşescu baby, he arrived fully formed,

      since then he’s never not been touching one of us

      and I think his parents named him after a Disciple

      so he would always be surrounded by hovering ghosts and histories.

      On the banks below, all my parents’ friends are on 2nd marriages,

      3rd homes,

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