Poetry: Selections from Andrew Leggett

CALL OF THE VOID

 

In the dark, this poem is a lightning strike

on the tines of a fork sticking up to receive it,

handle imbedded in the right parietal bone

of my skull. As the signal runs, the sutures

sizzle and meld a fresh seal on the fontanelle

of the infant I once was. It burns old circuits 

so the pain runs away like the memory 

of a dream, chased as it recedes behind

a closing curtain, tantalising as the interval

there isn’t at the end of a one act play. 

That child cries out to be held in an envelope

of arms, long enough to stretch all the way

around and join again in the middle,

tight enough to keep the trauma secret.

 

I am shedding parts of myself,

lighter with each organ discarded

outside facilities at wayside rest areas,

sometimes at night, under halogen

lights of security for travellers

on their journeys between towns,

up and down the Pacific Highway.

Most of me now, I have left behind

somewhere between Brisbane and Sydney,

flyblown, feeding the rodents, crows

and sacred ibis that flock to the maggots.

When bones turn to ash, I will scatter

like memory, so those left behind have

nothing to fear from darkness or ghosts.

 

There is a gap in the protective rails

lining the path along the gorge, a gap

through which I step. On the shelf, I slip 

forty years back, still far from the edge

to which Mother warned I’d be drawn.

The lifebuoys on their posts hang, votive

offerings to ravenous gods that feed

on the potential for memories of the fall

that never came, or came only in a dream

of jumping from this precipice into waves

and onto the rocks submerged below.

I make a paramnestic matricidal leap.

Mother, you were never pushed so far

as to follow my urge to take the plunge.

 

I remember falling, though I never

fell, other than in dreams. I always 

woke in terror, just before the impact

of my body smashed to smithereens.

I can’t remember that I ever fell,

but could not sleep for fear in dreams

of falling, so many times, forever,

in the moment of this mortal shell

becoming meteor, of immanence 

of death. The fear of blank paralysis

forced me not to close my eyes.

I lay awake each night and read

of fighter pilots strafed and bailing.

I have never dreamed of flying.

ENTRANCE INTERVIEW FOR THE ACADEMY OF THE COMMON RINGTAIL POSSUM AND THE SULPHUR CRESTED COCKATOO

 

I joined the meeting on line 

at 2.00 p.m. Melbourne time 

as the dawn broke into a cold blue sky 

across from where I sat, on hotel wifi, 

comforted by the restoration 

of the old Distiller’s House

in Torphichen Street, Edinburgh.

 

The cockatoo told me that we’d never met,

but the possum reminded me of rejection

as a kindness experienced in another life,

its transience accepted far too willingly,

for which I should remain 

forever in her debt.

 

The trouble I had taken to fly so far 

away from them was duly noted, 

skittering and swinging across taut 

overhead power lines, 

crossing a vast but warming ocean, 

to ensure we’d not be simultaneously 

convocated in a three-piece suit, 

fielding a wheel down at third leg, 

a tangled arboretum or a low-cut aviary, 

one resembling those occupied 

by doctors attending bogus 

conferences in the time of Covid,

celebrating moments that brought 

the bottle brush early to bloom, 

provoking a winter honeyeaters’ dance 

before the polar ice cap melt 

that drowned so many small 

Pacific island nations.

 

These cordialities were exchanged 

over those few crumbs of virtual 

wedding cake that were all I could 

provide for the cockatoo’s peck.

 

The possum’s incisors cut through the tape

to open the bridge to cross into dark matter: 

Had I ever dwelt in an old wooden house

in the village of Macksville, 

just uphill from the Nambucca River? 

Had I ever watched fish jump at the moon 

with the bridge lit up purple, 

when the frogmouth flew to commune?

 

After such knowledge, with the breadth

of my tailgate, should I not travel,

with a lyre bird’s pants on fire,

in the moral vacuum that we call country,

lapping the butterfly champion 

without drawing breath?

 

Was there room for runes to be graved 

through the lichen and onto that stone

that serves to pass for a brain, 

while all that has been written yet 

fades and the stone, razed from the hill, 

disappears under the turf?

 

When I uttered a simple, affirmative yes,

the cockatoo screeched as he flew. 

Preening the fan of his yellow crest, 

he smashed through the screen wall

to open the cavity close to my chest.

DEMONS IN THE CEILING

 

On my way to the Austria Centre 

to present a paper 

explaining demons in the ceiling  

as cloud formations 

condensing from humidity 

in the inferno 

of the cavity 

above the air-conditioning,

I stopped to photograph the artwork

of the cardboard pop-up stalls 

protesting psychiatry.

 

PSYCHIATRIE appeared in red 

above the death camp door 

to a grey seclusion room. 

The caption: TOD STATT HILFE.

 

Death instead of help? 

The last creature killed 

was a cockroach that went under the heel 

of a gentle delegate from Lithuania. 

 

Celebrations of the death were muted, 

only noted in the news sheets 

of small progressive nations 

such as Iceland. 

 

Few medals were awarded,

only to the paramedics 

on their way to resuscitate

the comrade who fell, 

slipping on the crushed shellac 

of the insect exoskeleton. 

 

No reprisals followed, 

even after the presentation 

on trauma and meaning 

in the life of a soldier

caught up in genocide

of people far too similar. 

 

Those with long memories 

spoke of a time

when the ambassador 

of a far-off country 

met with death 

upon confession

of the accidental killing 

of a butterfly.

 

There was little time for storytelling.

Fragmented narratives were swept 

under carpet rolled out 

for those with research sponsored

by big Pharma.

 

After four days of carolling, 

the blue whale bellowed, 

signalling the end time 

for a shoal of plankton. 

 

The delegates rose 

to a swaying conga line, 

throwing their badges and lanyards

in a pile 

as they snaked towards the exit.

 

Later these relics 

passed over to agents

of the Worldwide Church of Scientology,

at their disposal 

for an arcane ceremony.

 

Across the planet, 

families of psychiatrists 

lost their loved ones  

to spontaneous combustion. 

 

Their ghastly remnants

were sucked into the vacuum 

left by the debunking

of the demons in the ceiling.

Andrew Leggett is an Australian author and editor of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary academic papers and songs. His third collection of poetry Losing Touch was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. His fiction collection In Dreams and Other Stories has recently been accepted for publication, also by Ginninderra Press. In addition to medical degrees and postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry and psychotherapy, Andrew holds a research masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland and a PhD in Creative Writing from Griffith University. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor with the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry.