 |
| Andrew Leggett |
GIFT
My children have given him
back to me, a restoration copy
of a photograph.
On his graduation day
my father at forty-three
wore a soft child’s face.
I match his greying sideburns
with my own and meet
his bookworm’s gaze.
Those shaven cheeks
remind me of the rasp
of his five o’clock kiss.
Now the hairclipper’s number one blade
scythes my stubbled scalp like Whitman
harvesting grass fromm soldier’s graves.
Remember son, I took you
to your grandad’s grave
when you were three.
You hit me and you screamed
that I should break that grass
with haste to shovel him free.
CHICKENMAN
My uncle runs a gunshop
in Toowoomba. In his spare time
he collates the family tree.
On a recent business trip
he found another cousin,
a chicken man in Texas, USA.
Can you see the chickenman
in chickensuit, ten gallon hat
wingtip on the six-gun
struttin’ round the chicken ranch
with rootin’-tootin’ Uncle Cam
the pistol shootin’ gun totin’
mercantile Australian businessman?
Yes, my seventh cousin
is a big American chickenman
with 17 million broody hens
all layin’ eggs for
good ol’ Uncle Sam.
A postcard from my Uncle Cam
told me of the chickenman.
In my sleep I tossed and cried
that I don’t want
to be Kentucky Fried
but Chickenman won’t listen
just lifts his leg
and keeps on pissin’
on my uncle’s friendly hand.
WHERE OIL DRUMS GO TO DIE
In the land where oil drums go to die
lived jazz cornetist Papa Mutt Carey,
who raised his horn and blew ‘Get Out of Here
(And Go On Home)’, waking memories of 1944
and a creole band with trombone man Kid Ory.
The drums, some stacked in lines, some sprawling
on the grass, beat back a Melanesian story
of past lives lived in makeshift rafts
bearing soldiers in jungle greens,
drifting in the Coral Sea without a radio,
praying for the navy as the storms rolled in.
AUSTRALIA DAY, SOUTH BRISBANE
1. Lying in a hotel room opposite cranes in operation,
I read a nonlinear narrative of lives on Wall Street:
fiction for a world in which I am a pilgrim stranger.
2. In another city, two men on a tennis court are not playing.
They are locked in battle. Somewhere in Gaza, a building
explodes. The Iron Dome takes down another rocket.
3. No birds are in flight, but I hear birdsong through the window
of the Australian Open. A player scoops low, racquet
catching the ball half volley, dropping it just over the net.
4. The spoonbill is not familiar to the crane but belongs with
the sacred ibis: the common bin turkey. Cafés are closed.
making it difficult to find somewhere for breakfast.
5. Some people approve of my t-shirt with two frogs kissing.
I look forward to travel: New York next September.
I will wear it on Wall Street. I have booked the apartment.
Andrew Leggett is an Australian author and editor of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary academic papers, reviews and songs. His work has been widely published in Australia, the United States of America and many other countries. His poetry has placed or been shortlisted for numerous national and international awards. His published collections are Old Time Religion and Other Poems (Interactive Press, 1998), Dark Husk of Beauty (Interactive Press, 2006) and Losing Touch (Ginninderra Press, 2022). These works are readily available on Amazon. His songs, recorded with his band The Blood Moon Wailers, can be found on most commercial streaming services. The poems selected are among those relevant to his ambivalent engagement with American poetry and culture. He acknowledges substantial influence from American poets including Lowell, Plath, Whitman, Williams, Frost, ee cummings, Ashbery and the Beats, as well as musical influences from jazz, blues, Americana Old Time, folk and country music. In addition to medical degrees and postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry and psychotherapy, he holds a research master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland and a PhD in Creative Writing from Griffith University. Andrew Is an Associate Professor with the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry.
