Ali Whitelock

Poetry

Contents
About Ali Whitelock

the lactic acid in the calves of your despair

eventually you will turn fifty

hate is a thing without feathers

if you have no eyes where do the tears go?

this is coal don’t be afraid.

Published in UNFURL

Ali Whitelock, unfurl /4 1

About Ali Whitelock

Ali Whitelock is a Scottish poet and writer living on the South coast of Sydney with her French,
chain-smoking husband. Her latest poetry collection, the lactic acid in the calves of your despair,
is published by Wakefield Press and her debut collection, and my heart crumples like a coke can
(Wakefield Press, 2018) has a forthcoming UK edition by Polygon, Edinburgh. Her memoir,
Poking seaweed with a stick and running away from the smell, was launched at Sydney Writers
Festival to critical acclaim in Australia (2008) and the UK (2009).

Poetry was not something I ever thought was for me. I hated it in school and never read it as an
adult. Then I turned fifty and, by some bizarre twist of fate, started writing my own.

The more poets I got to know, the more I was astonished to learn that many of them had been
writing poems since they could hold a pen and had parents who’d recite verse to them morning,
noon and night. How I longed for one of those poetic pipe-smoking fathers in corduroys sporting a
tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, who’d read poetry to me in the evening by a roaring log
fire. In my childhood, the only poem remotely hinted at in our house was A Red, Red Rose once a
year on St Valentine’s day. In short, our house was empty of poetry, literature, logs and books in
general.

In an interview, brilliant Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan told the interviewer there were no books
in his home when he was growing up. After the interview Andrew’s father called him, more than a
little annoyed, “What do you mean, you grew up in a house with no books? Sure there was a
green book sitting on top of the fridge for years!” To which Andrew replied, “Dad, that was the
Kilmarnock phone directory.” So the great Andrew O’Hagan and I shared similar book-less
upbringings, but clearly that’s where the similarities between us end.

Two-thirds of the way through high school I was removed from the English class in order to make
way for a student with more promise. I was put into geography. It wasn’t entirely useless––I can
now read an ordnance survey map with great confidence, name the deepest ocean at the drop of
a hat, dazzle at dinner parties trundling out the capital cities of the world like a trained
chimpanzee.

Eventually I ran away from my geographical and non-bookish past in Scotland to Australia. Did my
past catch up with me? Absolutely. But Australia offered me something Scotland at that time did
not: endless skies, super-sized servings of ‘she’ll be right’; affordable therapy and a chance
happening upon a secondhand book, when I was forty nine, called Eight American Poets. When I
opened its pages I discovered John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. My mouth
fell open like a drawbridge and I allowed these poems to march on in.

You can read more about Ali at her website, ‹www.aliwhitelock.com›.

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the lactic acid in the calves of your despair

let me pour tea into the holes of your grief, add drops
to your eyes now emptied of tears, wrap your wounds
in gauze soaked overnight in my deepest concern.
let me wring out the sleeves of your thick woollen
jumper now drenched in the song of your mourning.
let me peg it to dry in what little sun there is. let me
utter sounds that comfort, make tea that soothes.
let me know all i can say is
i’m so sorry
here drink this tea
then the sorry thing again.
let me wave you off from the base of the Grampians
of your anguish, fill your back pack with squares of dark
chocolate and emergency dried fruit––nourishment,
you will need it along the way. know as you climb your calves
will burn with the lactic acid of your despair. breathe
into your pain––know it will recede.
sit down a while and drink from the tartan thermos
of your healing. and when you reach your cairn,
lean in to the wind, look down into your valley
of loss. marvel at the distance you have covered.
at how far you have come.

Note: YouTube video of this poem.

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eventually you will turn fifty

and this will be the day you will lose your mind.
you will produce honey and certain insects
will be attracted to you
you will put on a dab of hollywood red lipstick
this will be the same colour you discovered
when you were ten in the cardboard mushroom
carton that doubled as your mother’s make-up box
and when you emerged from the bathroom wearing
the lipstick your father told you you looked like a fucking
whore and it will surprise you that actually
he was wrong 

you will put on a black frock which never
used to but now clings to the rolls you seem
to have developed over-night. these rolls
will make you appear more womanly and you will
not mind this one bit

you will start to take more time over your hair

buy a pair of earrings in the jewellery shop
that is closing down they will match your lipstick
and you will look beautiful because your hair
will fall over one eye and this will make you look sultry
you will even consider putting on the MAC eyeshadow
you bought seven years ago and never opened
it may still be good. a man you do not know
will tell you your earrings make the green
of your eyes look very nice and you will laugh
and look away as though you are shy though
you will hope the lens of his camera is still
upon you

you will have spent twenty years with the same partner
this partner will love you more and better than anyone
ever could including your own mother who loves you very much
eventually your earrings and lipstick will cause your partner
substantial discomfort though he will not say anything
about it because he will know that turning
fifty sometimes means that things might change
and he will know that all he can do is wait to see if anything
is still standing once the high pressure
system has moved through and although he is not a buddhist
he will accept the river of life will sometimes
burst its banks that water will rise in kitchens
and the insurers will need to be called in to assess the damage
to the european appliances and you will know something
inside you is dying now that the tub of fresh double cream
that has sat happily at 3 degrees in the refrigerator
of your life is now on the turn. you will meet a man 

you did not expect to meet you will want to spend
many nights with him you will make up many excuses

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as to why you are coming home late you will ask your girlfriend
who is also very good at lying to join you in your dreich den
of dishonesty and she will agree to act as your alibi
should your partner of twenty years decide
to call her one night to confirm you are with her.

on the evenings you are not home your partner

of twenty years will eat dinner on his own
and he will cling wrap yours so when you come home
he can microwave it for you so you can have a hot meal
he will know that things are now very different
and he will know exactly what is different
but he will not say anything about it because
he will not want to make you feel you cannot behave
in the way you find you suddenly need to behave
he will notice you are now shaving your legs
having your bikini line waxed and sometimes
your nails painted fire engine red and he will not believe
the outrageous lies you are telling him
but he will not call you on them and this will
make you think you are getting away with them
and even though he is not a buddhist he will
not show you any rage rather he will love
you all the more because he will understand
that you what need right now is love

and one morning when you will have stuffed

your liver so full of your own lies that it sits
swollen like that of a french goose
he will ask you gently if you want to talk about
what’s going on and still you will tell him everything
is fine and keep on with your lies till you are now choking
on them

eventually you will be home for dinner less and less

and your lies will increase more and more
and one night you will send him a text saying
you will be back later than usual maybe even the next day
and your lie for this one will be very original and completely
unbelievable but you are now so addicted
to your lies like a kid on nothing but smarties and mars bars
and tob-le-fucking-rones that you just keep right on
shovelling your refined sugar onto the fire of your truth
and your partner of twenty years will text you back simply
saying ‘OK’ ‘cause he knows you need to go through what
you need to go through and he will eat dinner alone
that night along with all the other nights and he will wash
the dishes and watch the evening news and he will miss
that you are not there shouting at the telly when the liberals
come on and he will put the hot water bottle on your side
of the bed and cling wrap your dinner because
he understands the importance of a warm bed
and a hot meal when you finally come home.

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hate is a thing without feathers

i have always hated my thighs. (is hate too strong a word?)

if hate were a thing with feathers i could hold my own gaze
in he mirror longer than three seconds. when she first married
him the worst word my mother could think of to say was hate.
she lived with him for forty three years. with time her vocabulary
grew––significantly. eventually she was up there with the best
of them, pulling one profanity after another from her once feather
lined throat like red eyed albino rabbits from a magicians top hat.
when i read Ben Lerner’s poem and get to his line, ‘… every time,
he says, breasts are described in the poems of men a woman
undergoes mastectomy…’ i glance down at my own, diminished
since the starvation. from there my eyes collapse onto the exhausted
plateau of my thighs spreading over the edges of my chair like
pancake batter thrown carelessly into a cold frying pan
by a disinterested chef. in the days before god was born
these thighs were so firm birds could have perched on them,
lost themselves in the fertile plain of stoic vegetation that grew
and grew and asked nothing in return. hair no longer sprouts
from their lukewarm inners now. tumble weed could blow
through the sagging thigh-gap i used to think was the meaning
of life. what weighs more - twenty kilos of hate or twenty
kilos of coal? in the daylight hours i cover my thighs in black,
sometimes blue. i wear my pants loose. i cannot bear to be
contained in close quarters to my own skin. at night i wear
my mother’s pyjama bottoms. navy blue with clusters of tiny
pink stars fizzing away like a thousand champagne
bubbles with nothing to celebrate.

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if you have no eyes where do the tears go?

the emotions are half price on tuesdays.

you are lured in after your father’s funeral
by the flouro lights bright as the mushroom
cloud you’re not meant to look directly into
lest it burn the eyes right out of your fucking
head––

if you have no eyes, where do the tears go?

you go inside. pull your collar up, sink your

unexpectedly wet face into the V of your jumper.
make like the woman who cut the coupon from
the newspaper & won the three minute trolley
dash at the local supermarket.

take a trolley that does not require the coin

you never have:

on your mark.

get set.

go.

aisle 1
baked beans, corned beef, two fruits in syrup, sadness. 

move quickly. sadness is on special. take a dozen cans.
check date. make sure it has long best before.

aisle 2
ajax, napisan, stain remover, disappointment.
throw in a dozen cans of disappointment.
reconsider. take spares.

aisle 3
toothpaste, mouth wash, sanitary towels, anger.
empty shelves of anger. get second trolley. advise
girl on tannoy you will need assistance to the car.

aisle 4
dog meat, cat litter, sardines, regret. throw in a few,
but then again too few to mention.

[turn out of aisle four, past the yoghurts culturing

better days, the free range eggs in their supermarket
cage, the low fat cottage cheese you used to buy
in your teens when you were trying to disappear]

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aisle 5
frozen peas, dim sim, linda mccartney hot dogs,
forgiveness––seeping from freezers like fog.
wipe a circle in the condensation on the glass 

door, press your eye up against it, stare in at the
piles of forgiveness stacked neatly in convenient
250g blocks. open the door. take a single block
in your hand. it is lighter than you imagined. turn
to your trolley already overflowing with the anger
& the rage, the disappointment & the hardly any
regret & consign the 250g block of forgiveness
back to its fog.

aisle 6
strawberry ice cream, coconut fro-yo, lemon
sorbet, comfort. take ten tubs of comfort, two
of the sorbet four of the coconut fro-yo though
you do not really know what fro-yo is, it sounds
like it might be happiness.

make way to check out. pile half price emotions

on conveyor belt. pay your bill. the girl tannoys
for car assistance. once in your car you momentarily
consider going back for even just one single block
of forgiveness. you decide against it. turn the key
in your ignition. head for the exit.
forgiveness is on ice. you
know it will keep.

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this is coal don’t be afraid.

if you are in or close to the bush leave now. if you choose to stay we may not be able to save you.
save any woollen blankets you may have wrap yourself in them when the fire comes there is no
better place to raise kids. if you are trapped in your car face towards the oncoming fire tightly
close windows and doors get down below window level this is your highest priority. the prime
minister regrets any offence caused to anyone for him being away at this time of crisis. for those
of you in fire affected [insert town name here], it is now too late to leave. the girls and jen will stay
on and stay out the rest of the time we had booked here we will not be changing our climate policy
settings. but i’m comforted by the fact that australians would like me to be here, just simply so i
can be here, alongside them as they're going through this terrible time how good is hawaii? if you
don’t have a Bush Fire Smoke Respirator P2 Aura Flat Fold mask including valve 9322A+ (max 2
packets per customer, was $94.95 now $77.45), stay indoors. i don’t hold a hose mate but i
understand people are angry people are hurting. this is coal don’t be scared don’t be afraid seek
shelter from the heat of the fire. but look, the girls and jen, they love holidaying in hawaii and so
we’ve had a few nice days here. drink water to prevent dehydration evacuate your horse to the
beach have your children row for their lives. australians will be inspired by the great feats of our
cricketers this is not about climate change we are meeting and beating our paris agreement
targets how good’s australia? to the five hundred million species we burned how good’s the
cricket? you won’t be getting any votes down here buddy you’re an idiot leave the pregnant
woman’s hand alone. the sky will turn black turn your headlights on. you’re out son. do you have
a bush fire survival plan? activate it.

Note: This is a found poem made up of statements by Scott Morrison (Prime Minister) when it was discovered he was on holiday in
Hawaii while Australia burned in catastrophic bush fires. The poem also includes statements from our Rural Fire Service, as well as
statements made by residents of fire affected communities.
YouTube video of this poem.

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