Eleanor Jackson

Eleanor Jackson is fitting described by Anthony O’Sullivan as “a big cup of mind tea.” Even in the crash-bang world of slam poetry, Eleanor somehow wins through and wows crowds by purer means – the basics of beautiful writing and beautiful reading. No pyrotechnics, no ranting and flailing, but she routinely manages to be one of the most compelling performers in the room. People rave about her, people cry, but above all people shut up and listen. The great tribute of silence.

ink

Lying front down
Against the soft leather
Of the chairs
At Chapel Tattoo,
Mirerva
Felt the minute scalds
Of buzzing needle
To milk-butter skin.
As the moments of pain,
Found themselves
Blue-black, black, blue,
Rose Hardy,
Inscribed secret messages
Of joy,
Into Mirerva’s flesh.
Long feather fans and
Peacock eyes
Lashed themselves across
The smooth curves
Of back and buttock.
Five hours in,
She realized
Her first marriage was nothing:

This was commitment.

engineering

It’s not like she hasn’t
Been there before.

She gets a coffee there
Every meaningless morning day

Like all the other commuters.
But they talk,

And it seems
To be worth more

Than three dollars ten
And a stamp

In her loyalty card.
She passes again;

“Flat white. Have here thanks.”
And in-her-head friends are all saying

“You gotta get out there”
So she stumbles into

“Did you wanna have dinner
Some time?”

Which is a question
That registers

Through the static of
The soy decaf latte

And the earl grey for table four.
Jeremy smiles,

Feist plays on the stereo,
Mirerva squirms and says inexplicably,

“God, I feel so white,
I love girls with bangs”.

Which makes no sense at all
To Jeremy.

But he beats out the coffee grounds,
Wipes the burnt, confused froth

From the nozzle,
And says,

“Sure, how about next Thursday?”

t-shirt

Because she was,
After all,
Only a girl,
She
Tried to dress with the philosophical
Finesse
Of which t-shirt
Says:
I’m funky but not easy
I bring it but I don’t take too much
It’s bamboo from this new something
Fuck that’s wanky
Um, this is just a
You know, I just
Thing I
Threw on
Rolled out
Cruised in
Felt hot
Like a cowboy
In this t-shirt.

Because he was
After all
Only a guy
He
Sniffed both armpits,
Wrinkled his nose,
Shrugged up,
Pulled fabric from the neck forwards,
And grabbed a
Clean, plain white one
From the drawer,
Bailed out of the house
Unchained his bike
Headed towards the restaurant.
Snaking the tramlines,
Liquid leaning into the wind.
Like a cowboy
In this t-shirt.

meal

Grace was never said
Before that meal.
Who says grace
On a first date
These days?
But
Like Quakers do,
There was a moment of silence -
Revered and perfect.
Held before she even reached
The table
While the waiter
Was checking her booking.
She prayed that somewhere
Between
The main and dessert,
The booze and the coffee,
Jeremy might help her discover why
Each morning
She wrote a cursive
“Amour”
With her finger
In the steam of the shower glass.

Maybe he could be the thing
To make her understand this line in a poem
She’d read somewhere once:

Crying
Is compulsory
After the symphony
Of your love.

sign

Tom Bastow
And Hamish McCubbin
Were well drunk
By four thirty that afternoon.

Tom Bastow
And Hamish McCubbin
Had been at the engineering bbq
On the South Lawn
And the sun had been shining
And the beers had been free
Which is why
They were well drunk
By four thirty that afternoon.

Tom Bastow
And Hamish McCubbin
Were feeling very little
But spastic
And happy
And reckless
And young
And in need of a piss
They were that drunk
By four thirty that afternoon.

By two thirty that morning,
In the slippery wet of the night,
Their way back from
Some club
With loud music
And fleshy girls,
All called Cath or Michelle,
They were that drunk
Together they registered
Almost nothing at all
When Tom’s parents’ old Landcruiser
Unexpectedly mounted the curb
And collected a stop sign.

It was utterly random
But at the time
So funny, so fucking funny,
When the idea
Wandered into Tom’s head,
Or maybe it was Hamish’s idea;
Who knows?

Either way,
At twelve thirty
The next afternoon,
When Hamish wandered out
Into the loungeroom
Scratching his humid bits
And tasting the camel
That had died in this mouth

There was a bleeding great
Stop sign,
Concrete footing and all,
Lying on the couch
Nestled beside Tom.

Well, at least he picked up.

red

crimson red                the coca-cola advertisement
cardinal red                the cap on the guy at the tram stop
carmine red                the ring on the well-dressed woman’s finger
cherry red                   the knee socks of the Asian exchange student
cinnabar red               the roof of the tumbledown terrace on the corner
cancer red                   the discarded Marlboro packet on the ground

none as                                  red
as the                                     red
Honda civic
as it cruised through
intersection
oblivious to the
stop sign                                red
that wasn’t there.

any more.

.

wheels

When wheels kiss
It is quite awkward.
For they have neither lips
Nor tongues.

Wheels have only
Spoke and hub,
Rim and round.
Unlacing themselves

They can try to find the fondle -
The tactile febrile loveliness
Of a kiss
But, in the main,

It’s a giant fuck up.

And so it was, as the wheels
Of the red Honda
Tried to kiss
The spokes of Jeremy’s bike

The tires,
They knocked,
Like awkward teenagers
Biting the flesh,

Breaking the nose
Jeremy’s legs,
And then three ribs and
He was well entangled,

Pathetically inside
The undercarriage of the car
Before both sets of spinning executioners
Decided that
They weren’t really that turned on.

lips

Slicked in Shisheido Red
Mirerva’s lips
Had been rehearsing and repeating:

Hey, how are you?
Hi, how are you?
So, how are you?

She was staring out the window
To the road and the passing traffic
When that car and that bike

Began their painful courtship.
And the lips
Then were forming

The oh oh oh
Circle of shock
And quickly despair

All thoughts of
“How are you?”
Becoming perfectly

Redundant against the manifest
Clarity
That clearly, he wasn’t.

Doing that well.

She watched as Jeremy’s whole body skittered
Moving with an animal shiver -
Like a kangaroo she’d once seen

About to be hit by a truck on
The Great Ocean Road.
Every muscle, every sinew

Awake in a synaptic tsunami -
Momentarily alive in
Pure fear, pure panic.

.

liquid

The pupils dilate, blooming like dark and desperate flowers; adrenaline pulses, finding artery and vein, vessel and courseway; he is all fight, all flight, and all flow.

The pedal depresses, with the heartbeat heavy of a kick drum; the piston fills with brake fluid; the pressure mounts, it moves capillary and line; and it is all physics and force and horror.

The bonnet cracks the rib cage, casual as knuckles; the ribs gasp open the lungs, tearing the lines the cylinders, the vessels, the courseways, the veins, the capillaries; and it is all dam burst and drowning.

zoo

It’s not like he believed in
All that
Re-in-carnation -
Life after life after death.
So he by-passed
The spectacle
Of his funeral.

He wouldn’t have liked it.
Anyway,
It had been years
Since he’d listened to Coldplay -
It was only that one song.
What were they thinking?
And why were they in a church?

It was a zoo.
His mother, the ostrich,
Her head buried in the Herald Sun sand of
“I can’t believe he’s dead,
My boy, my beautiful boy”.
But she couldn’t believe
A lot of things.

She couldn’t believe
He didn’t finish uni,
He was still working that bar,
She couldn’t believe
He got a tattoo,
“God, he got all those tattoos.
He was such a bright boy, you know?”

His father, the wounded, ragged lion,
Paw pricked by thorn,
Ugly cousins, buck-toothed macaques
Close, but not quite human,
His grandmother, softened and primordial,
A smooth-edged manatee,
Singing some mournful lament under her breath,

Unknown burbles and aching keens.
Some guys from the bar, a mass of lemmings,
Odd gazelles of ex-lovers.
Familiar dun-furred figures
Of friends like tattered wolves.
Strangest most -
In all the exhibits,

The most fantastical creature,
Curled against the cage of the back pew,
Wearing a backless dress of navy blue,
Was the girl he was about to go on a date with.
She had the back of an art deco peacock,
Turquoise and tourmaline eye shadow
Washing watermark down her cheeks.

A woman who’d never known him
And wept still
Because she thought
She could have loved him.