GEOFF LEMON
Geoff Lemon is a Melbourne writer, student, troublemaker and sometime
croupier. He’s 21 years old, and lives in an odd arty kind of bushland
suburb called Eltham, 45 minutes out of the city. His Bachelor of Arts
majored in creative writing and 20th century history, specialising in the
Second World War. He’s six foot five, with curly hair, which makes him fun
to poke with a stick. He is lazy but not incompetent, and is rumoured to be
good company. If you like his work, or want to contact him about it, write
to geoff_lemon@hotmail.com
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MY GRANDAD’S GHOST
I never met my grandad
And his ghost and I were never introduced
I have to approach him and say hello myself
And it feels kind of awkward
All I know of him is
A few photographs
b&w
A serious looking man with stringy wiry strength
And beakish nose
(he was a schoolteacher, and could have been terrifying)
His stainless steel ashtray in the shape of Australia
With a little metal aeroplane
Attached by a stalk
Flying over it
A Bachelor of Arts
Stained with years
That hangs in my grandma’s study
And has Ronald Cordingley and a big red seal
His rifles – three, and a double barrelled shotgun
They always held my gaze
Their stained wood stocks and darkened metal
Speaking of their age
I felt as though that day decades past
When they were oiled
Could be regained
By simple laying on of hands
To feel the smooth wood and breathe its smell
That oil and grease
And draw the hammer back –
Its movement smooth, its heavy click assured
In my mind
He lives in that Australian myth
A time when men wore hats and drove EHs
And no-one spoke about the war
When they were all called Bill and Perce and Sid
And wore dusty suits
And all knew someone who’d been in Singapore December ‘41
My grandad’s ghost
Speaks quietly to me
When I allow myself that luxury
I still find it awkward, since we never really met
I feel like he’s not mine to talk to
But I think he’d be ok with it
My grandad’s ghost still has wiry muscles, with thinning hair
And wears a suit
He’s tinged that colour from 50s period dramas on ABC
He stands next to me on the porch of the house in Bendigo
The house he built with his own hands
Just like in the stories
He stands with me on the porch
In the quiet lull of after rain at dusk
When the world smells fresh and stretches out its arms
When the bush can open itself for a moment
No longer shrinking shrivelled from the drying sun
The last light throws dim silhouettes of spiky scrub
Against the paddock next door
We face it all, and speak in quiet voices, and share a quiet smile
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MY GRANDMA’S GHOST
My grandma’s ghost doesn’t exist yet
Because she’s still alive
But there’ll come a time it will, I guess
It will seem awfully quiet up there
If I spend a day alone
I think the empty feeling in my stomach will prevail
And I’ll have to hurry off once the sun goes down
Head back down the highways to the city where I live
In a different kind of life
Hers always makes me nervous
Too much time and stillness
Too much alone and too much time to think
And so the highway
Rush to it with quick breath, pretending I’m not scared
And find good reasons why I can’t look back
The highway
Where headlights conspire with the trees to make great tunnels
That I’ll rocket down, a hundred k’s an hour
And then, as I cross the lower slumps of Great Dividing Range,
A Southern Cross will sit outside my driver’s window
And the fields lie beneath.
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DOG
The grass was tall when I walked on my hill this morning.
It stood dry like the spears of a regiment,
A forest of spears.
Grass like steel like trees.
The clouds were out when I walked on my hill.
Stretched and layered taffeta bands across the sky,
Lit radiant.
There’s a bridge I sometimes walk across.
My dog is black and white.
He waits for me
Briefly,
Then plunges across to hurry on his way,
Until his tail, sticking up from the long grass and signalling urgently,
Is all that I can see.
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YELLOW
She had yellow eyes.
Her eyes were yellow.
My bones cracked and snapped, the crazed
Glaze was yellow,
Dull and viscous yellow.
I crumpled in the yellow dust.
Skin sagging wrinkled bleached to yellow.
My nails thickened, long and brittle yellow.
Hoarse throat screamed a yellow scream,
The rising bile yellow.
I coughed, my cheeks caved in, sallow
And the tortured parchment skin was yellow.
I cracked and crumbled, yellow skin and yellow bone
Dissolving into yellow dust and yellow stone
And scratched and violent yellow cries
Faded with the yellow sun.
Her eyes were yellow.
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YUL
My friend Rabbi wants
To snort lines off Yul Brynner’s head.
Yul Brynner’s dead, we tell him.
But he doesn’t care.
Imagine it, he says.
His shiny bald head.
So bald…
So shiny…
He’s dead, we say.
Rabbi doesn’t care.
We could dig him up, he says.
Imagine it.
Lines.
We could do them off his skull.
Imagine it.
It would still be bald…and shiny.
So bald…
So shiny…
He’s gone, we say. But Rabbi is insistent.
He’s the Marlboro Man, he says.
The Magnificent Seven.
He’s so tough.
A hard man.
He’d never have gone home to sleep, he would have had another Scotch.
It’s like a tribute.
We’ll dig him up.
He’d love it.
Yul Brynner’s dead, we say.
But Rabbi’s gone to find a shovel.
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LIGHT CHARGE BRIGADE
Here is pain
Here is pain
Centred in the middle of my chest
Heavy like a greasebowl Christmas pudding
Heavy like the days
Hot acid reflux
That reaches your eyes
Do you see?
Finally tearing myself open
Feeling it gush
Hot and infected
The pus infected wound I am
Ruptures
Splurting its horrible cargo
Ripping out
Towards the sky
It’s still closed in there
But the music lets it go, for a moment
It can flow again
Just for a moment
But this moment is a fucking great one for me
You burn down burn down burn down
Me
I on fire
Am a fire
Infired
Angry
With peppery bile still rising still flowing still gushing still sour
An angry horridness somehow triumphant headrush
Pumping in my temples
Exultant from nowhere
A scream released but I haven’t made a sound
My ribcage split open and it feels so good
Standing on a mountain
Split
And scream across the space like the crosscut saw
And that sick smile
When you know all’s pain and there’s nothing you can do
Charge of the light brigade
Nothing
Just sit, and wait, and bear
Bear up
Bear it all, be crushed, burn and die
Then you file your incisors
To a sickly point
And smile