ASHLLEY MORGAN-SHAE
Ashlley Morgan - Shae lives in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing and Fine Art and has been published in many Australian literary magazines. Her three books are Dancing at Dusk, New Cities (Grendon Press) and Love Trash (Five Islands Press). More of Ashlley's poems can be viewed at http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~ashlley
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THEORY OF DICKS
I look for height
I figure dick size is in
proportion to height
My friend's mother believes
big hands mean
big dicks - it's why
she married her husband
My ex's brother says
'We have big noses and
big dicks - and he's right
about the noses
My ex tells me
'Chinese are small
White boys can be lucky
Black men are big' - after I tell
him about the cute Asian boy I met
I still believe in
the perfect fit - when
you're in love it's
right - when you go
off them they are
just that bit too small
DREAMING OF PINEAPPLES
That night I dreamt of pineapples
and when my cousin asked where
I wanted to go, what to see,
I said I wanted to know how it was now
Along the road to the Sunshine Coast,
at Nambour, the Big Pineapple stood.
I hadn't seen it for thirty years
but I remembered the Golden Circle juice cans
In the paddocks Conrad dug in
pineapple heads. A sixth generation farmer,
he showed me the four growings: roothead
to leaf, to flower, to 18-month gold-orange fruit
'We used to kill one crow and string it up
to keep the others away,' he said. 'Smart birds,
sit when I come out with a stick,
only fly when they see a gun.'
'Half the farms have gone into sugar-cane,'
he said. 'Pineapples take a long time to
grow. We only get 30 cents each one.'
City-bred, I looked at the open sky
The tourist sugarcane train had trundled
its last lot of passengers; the front gate
closed. My cousin was looking for me.
Conrad gave me a three-headed pineapple
'He's twenty-five and single,' the gate-man
said. 'You won't remember me,' Conrad said.
In Queensland I danced in wintersun warm waves
and everynight sucked on juicy pineapples
It's a fruit, it's a flower
It's the summer of an hour
Sliding hold of gold
Sweet-fellow to devour
It's a thing, it's to sing
A story home to bring
Venture out, gad-about
Kiss it, eat it, make it sting
It's a fruit, it's a flower
It's the addict's underpower
The tart taste on the tongue
The swallow of its dower
It's the croon, it's the boon
It's the lazy afternoon
The orange of fanatical
Live-so-sweet, so soon
It's the gleam that I've seen
Tropic date of fielded dream
Going home, weighs a stone
I have heavy heart and steam
It's a fruit, it's a flower
It's the juicy, golden bower
Pineapple Queen of Fruit
You're the summer of my hour
WHERE I GREW UP
We hid out down by the river
Near the long grass and burnt-out cars
We drank till we couldn't remember
And passed out under the stars
The hole where I grew up
Vroom Vroom, on a roll
Death was to be a dag
Boys scabbed all your fags
School prison had screws with no idea
Boys hung assignments in trees
Someone was always running on the roof
There was no swimming, no equipment, no keys
The dole where I grew up
Some days half the class wagged
Every bus-stop wore black-texta slag
At home a look was clue to get out
A yell meant a brawl the whole night
Red wounds were to teach lessons
Nosy cops said juveniles have no rights
The role where I grew up
Vroom Vroom, on a roll
Top chicks at parties and hot car drags
It was no excuse to have your rags
I would walk the highway at midnight after work
Getting night-vision for shadows in the park
Happy for car headlights to keep moving
I was bred to find cover in the dark
The goal, where I grew up
Teachers were stupid, old hags
A dream was to drive a black jag
My mechanic was beaten in a divvy van
My cabinet-maker had five dope convictions
My best friend's sister left and hooked for heroin
I used big words and created up-myself frictions
The toll where I grew up
Vroom Vroom, on a roll
You are lucky in love to have a good shag
Someone who doesn't start to nag
A pregnant friend dropped out of school
Sat at home with three kids, beer and boyfriend
Her eyes got as closed as her mother's
The family house was the stuck living end
Home was the hole you crawled to
Work was without satisfaction
Money was what other people had
Fight was a criminal reaction
In the soul where I grew up
Vroom Vroom, on a roll
You're lucky in love to have a good shag
A dream was to drive a black jag
TOO
He wants
to root
to boot to toot
to scoot
her
He wants
to stamp
to clamp to tramp
to damp
her
He wants
to bus
to fuss to muss
to truss
her
He wants
to bind
to mind to rind
to wind
her
He wants
to ruff
to buff to tuff
to duff
her
He wants
to fizz
to sizz to tizz
to wizz
her
He wants
to hum
to bum to slum
to cum
her
He wants
to please
to tease to ease
to sleaze
her
He wants
to ram
to bam to wham
to slam
her
He wants
to back
to whack to rack
to hack
her
He wants
to bleep
to deep to sleep
to keep
her
He wants to - get - her
together
GENES
My father had unloved genes from his
mother who battered him with a
hairbrush. He met my mother who had
her own genes. She had been the
smallest and had watched her sisters
go out to balls while she stayed at home.
They passed their genes down to me
My gene genii
Hangs with doom rats
Black and blood swing bats
Plays junkie jazz-cats
In gene-pool mud-spats
I cut them up, re-sewed them, wore
them as street-hip and knocked them
about the house. Those genes pulled
other like-minded pairs towards me.
Guys like my father - good-looking and
prone to unzipped anger. I acted like
my mother - dressing in cardis and
undoing my sexy genes for love.
My gene genii
He's a kiss-and-smell block
A luck-ring in hock
Has not a long cock
Is a gene hard-knock
My mates were musicians, actors,
dancers, great dreamers. One wrote
a song about loving his blue, blue jeans.
He felt more in the song than in me.
Now my genes, not having been handed
on, are wearing out. But the unloved
gene will carry on. With its 'Look
at me. Love me please' blue blood-dye.
It's the gene of a generation.
My gene genii
No affectionate rub
Hallucinatory grub
Makes friends in the pub
Throws my bod ash-stub
The unloved gene is as catchy as a virus
The unloved gene survives in every climate
The unloved gene is on a billboard poster
The unloved gene is in a person close to you
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HOLLY AND NICK
Holly met Nick in a summertime Christmas.
She had sewn silver bells on her bikini.
She tinkled when she was coming.
A friend drew them rolling in the waves,
then scrawled on the picture, 'From Here to
Maternity' signing it Ruff and giving it as a gift.
Holly and Nick moved in together. Nick
brought things home: a kitten, a buxom Carol,
and stories of workmates at the Print-On-The-
Run workshop. Holly hung shredded white
gauze from the roof - like webs or nest-filling,
and made soups that Nick called potions.
Holly sewed wings for fairy shops and sewed
spare white fur on her knickers.
With washing Nick's red underwear began
to fade into pink. Holly added a string of
bells to the edge of the mattress and, for
flight dreams, a feathered band in her hair
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DREAMWEAVING
'Do you want me to turn your floppy
dick into a hard dick?' he says.
'What?' I ask. 'Computer lingo,' he says.
Then I start learning about my Options
- Click and Drag to get the text body across;
Clearface or Confidential or Futura fonts.
I identify Cross-Browser Issues: colours
that are not in the Safe Palette; GIFs jump
up and get noticed while JPEGs just
have to stand still. Flash flicks animatedly
across the screen. Avoid Frames, just shuffle
dance on the Tables. I try EyeCandy filters,
Pop Ups and forget my Memory capacity.
I collect Usability contacts: FTP, HTMP
and RGB. 'What next?' I ask my teacher.
'How can we…?' She advises
pressing and prodding, experimenting.
I set the scanner to Flatbed and press Go -
Filter-free and 300 d.p.i. 'Have fun,' the
teacher says, until we crash. 'I can't
understand what you've done,' she says.
'Turn on your on layers,' she reminds me.
'Define your site by naming it and use your Cache',
she adds. I retrieve the essential Home links,
think about CLUT and Pixel size and
maybe clicking in to a Hyper/Hot Spot.
I calmly slice my pages into big chunks,
Optimize my Assets into fuzzy suspects,
then try to fit my pieces back together.
Across the room Cara's Mulletman refuses to
go faster then freezes up altogether. I pull
some more tools off my Toolbar, Zoom In, Grab,
Crop, Add Pattern, Change Colour, Paste
and melt to Transparency. Display, Hide,
Move, Collapse, Restart, Enable, Wrap Around,
Modify, Scratch, Insert Image. Finally I mount
my Site on the Web and sit back,
exhausted. I click and press buttons,
ahhing over Rollovers, admiring the Effects,
lusting for Flash and Sound and trickier
Insertions. 'Let's do it again,' I say.
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PROBLEM CHILD
My mother never hugged me
or liked any thing I made
She told me I was
bad, mad, and looked like my dad
She tore up my drawings,
incinerated my writing,
never allowed me to go on excursions
I was mean, keen, not to be seen
I could not have an education
like my sister for a job
Any money spent on me
was a waste, unchaste, not to be graced
In my thirties she gave each
of my younger siblings 100,000 dollars
for house deposits. As usual I was
vexed, hexed, unreligiously sexed
When I wrote her a letter she
never answered. How dare I
think bad things about my mother
who gave me life, but never love
Remember it was me, not her, who was the problem
I was bold, told, not one to hold
Bad, mad, and I looked like my dad
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IN VIOLATE TOWN
I met a man, just out of
prison, got a note to find
his kids in an empty house
left by his wife to save her life
In Violate Town
His teeth are brown
Her feet will never
touch the ground
In a place where jobs are scarce
and anyone too flash - people
can live off the chosen dead
collected for their pension cash
In Snow Town
The bodies drown
In bank-vault vats
Where they are found
In jail paedophiles pray to survive
breakfast keeping their teeth
but outside in the brilliant day
animals prowl for meat
In Sleepy Town
The schoolgirls frown
No one is safe or
makes a sound
On the farm my grandma
buried her bridal dress from
the children, and dogs, and
sick of the dream-caress
In my Nana's town
The wedding gown
Buried long ago is a
dirt-memory mound
I live in a house of paper
stacks of scrawled sentences.
Planning to make a paper
raft so I will not drown
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BOOKMARK
A cat,
I slink my
tail between
leaves.
My sister
marks her
pages by
pressing down
the corners.
I follow,
sniffing at
this dirty
dog's trail