poems

© Alice White

first published Idiom 2000

then the collection Heartstricken Ginninderra Press 2001

Hedi Slimane is homeless

Father was an accountant

turned away from beseiged shelters.

Mother was a dressmaker

forced to face the elements.

We aren't going to continue

Prince of Wales suits:

the last resort for the homeless

during Victoria's cold snap.

Turning away 33 homeless men

a day.

The message of menswear is lost.

Find it.

© Alice White 2000

published in the collection Heartstricken Ginninderra Press 2001

Sonnet

I am writing this sonnet to tell you it's over

on some yellowed paper

I found in a drawer.

I can only remember your face - nothing more.

A white sheet burnt with dark eyes

and bruised lips. The crow's wing of your

hair - all I remember. So it's over. That's all.

I can only remember how you undressed

me midway through the ball, scalded your lips

on my skin; how we threw away our

overalls to make love when we were

painting my mother's bedroom wall.

I am writing to tell you it's over.

Goodbye. I don't want to see you anymore.

© Alice White 2001

published in the collection Heartstricken Ginninderra Press 2001

Other Poems

Lilac

Friday, bad hangover. Hoping to dress

up the day a bit I wear lilac. "Great

jacket," says Phil. " What's the colour? I'll guess..."

"Go on," insists Norma. "Research states

men don't use this word." "Hmm," grins Mark.

"A word men don't use. I know...vulva!

Lovely vulva jacket you're wearing this dark

wintry morning." "My Dad drives a vulva,"

points out Phil. "He would," agrees Mark, otherwise

driving a Holden, you wouldn't be alive

© Alice White 2001

Winner - Confession Files Competition at Melbourne Writers Festival 2001

Broadcast on Artery Triple J September 9 2001

Lacerated Finger

After the accident I play Bach;

notes like trees

in an endless sky.

Lacerated finger;

not hyperbole

medical fact on every form,

until I fear his narrow face

won’t hold the reality.

“Tell me a story,” he says,

so I invent dragons all afternoon,

wings shivering in the snow

waiting for the call of kings.

Imagination becomes the critical line,

in the strip lit hospital room,

between our luminescence

and the blood dropping out

of tea towels my neighbour

washes in the cold laundry trough.

The notes wait like discoveries;

his hand on the pillow now

wrapped into a pathetic mitten

to ward off fact.

© Alice White 2007

Blue Dog Volume 6 Number 12

Model Aeroplane

Merv sucked the fuel line clean

and this time the engine started.

Samuel gazed from the scratchy grass

as the two foot model hurtled like a winged

sewing machine down the paddock

and into the sky.

The baby in the house turned to look

at this noise became a black dot

on blue.

The engine cut out.

Like a suddenly removed consequence

the aeroplane failed to plummet;

so the silence announced its simulacrum beauty

inscribing silhouette across cumulus,

and in a movement of consolation for human ingenuity

led the aeroplane down to the ground like a feather.

© Alice White 2006

Highly Commended Melbourne Poets’ Union International Competition 2007