Ian C. Smith - One Poem

 Lost Weekend

By a beach trash bin, standing alone,

the spell of sex spent in the cool dawn,

his chagrin induces a low moan.

By a beach trash bin standing alone

he reviews last chances to atone,

recalls girlfriends, wives, lost hope, forlorn

by a beach trash bin, standing alone,

the spell of sex spent in the cool dawn.

Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds, The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, San Pedro River Review, Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, and Two Thirds North. His seventh book is Wonder Sadness Madness Joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.

Ian C. Smith - Two Poems

Fame & Eva Marie Saint

Your first film, the only woman cast
by fellow Oscar winner Elia Kazan
with Steiger, Malden, Lee J. Cobb
& Brando, desirable hotshock of Streetcar.
American cinema-verite, another first
a triumph in monochrome, the neo-realism
of Hoboken-on-Hudson’s corruption.

After Nebraska, & military school
Brando hung out with Rocky Marciano
absorbing inarticulate authenticity
to transform into a potential contender.
Did you study the religiously dutiful
to become convent-educated Edie
trying to resist young Brando’s Terry?

Your fair hair & skin light up
that bleak waterfront landscape
like the haloed saintly in medieval art.
Often shot in shadowy semi-darkness
Terry contrasts with Edie’s angelic glow
the camera’s work with light & shadow
at the moral heart of this moody film.

In the years following that career debut
during those light-comedic romps
did you think about beginners’ luck
search pages of scripts for magic again?
I picture you, your heart grown older
incognito in New Jersey, wishing a camera
could light you the way it did in youth.



Annual Déjà Vu

The coastal idyll of his holidays
reminds him of boyhood so long ago
higgledy, roads of grey sand, tea-tree.
The locals, different from visitors
transport him, eerily, backwards.
Many vehicles are old, especially
the visitors’ who build shacks
where they leave these wheels all year
because their beach is on an island.
These rusting, rattling dustraisers are
like those that passed his school bus.

The ozone is alive with corruption.
Councillors’ horizons are not straight
signs of change are dollar signs
but visitors prefer the status quo.
Locals refer to artists as ferals
feud with visitors and each other
as they did another time and place
writing stiff letters to the newspaper
which he finds unintentionally comic.
Whirlpools of violence and drugs suck
away the doldrum days of local kids.

In marram grass he glimpses himself
when his days smelled like this
bone nerve nail ligament vein thought
a lonely, unhappy, yearning time
when he deviously plotted escape.
He has found shelter from sea wind
wonders how many years he has left
to keep returning here, to this place
astounded again by his deep love
for starlight on shore wash, house lights
paths of sand, of the heart, this earth.



Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, Descant, Island, Magma, The Malahat Review, Southerly,& Westerly. His latest book is Lost Language of the Heart, Ginninderra (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

Ian C. Smith - One Poem

Stenting

My spade plunges through tough grass
loam, clay, the dolorous remains of days
enlarging each inspection hole
until it resembles a small, neat grave.
I would like to reassemble these shards.
Then the ding of steel on curved terracotta.
I am an archaeologist, or surveyor
an explorer re-charting neglected territory.
Our nineteen year-old was a baby
when I last plumbed these blocked waters.
The eldest of four, he reads at college now.
Nesting thrushes leave the lemon-scented gum
to serenade me from our jacaranda
consolation for this foetid swamp odour
the detritus of our days glugging free.
Roots searching for a drink in drought
formed a web, trapping fat, soapy waste
beneath us, a gurgling, trouble backing up
as relapsed hours snarled into weeks, years
foul, unobserved, accreting
congealing into a dam when we took off
for our longest holiday since nappy days
a break sorely needed, my voice shut
my only dreams left, mad dreams at night.
Then Seamus Heaney shared his thoughts
Philip Levine, too, lighting my candle.
Slick ooze flushes slate-black to clear
our water now flowing, silent, unimpeded.
Sated by earthy success, I feel refreshed
a man with a muddy spade, a clean outlook.



Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, Descant, Island, Magma, The Malahat Review, Southerly,& Westerly. His latest book is Lost Language of the Heart, Ginninderra (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

Ian C. Smith - One Poem

Sex, Love, and Regret

Under the Milky Way tonight he mourns.
He missed love’s last slow train
likens his body to a statue he passes
going nowhere, moss settled in the groins.

Falling in love didn’t happen often
but it felt dangerous, like breath held too long
light-headed, needing oxygen, wrong.
When alone he relaxed, stopped acting.

In feeling’s theatre he played the hero
sex, choreography to selected music
yet these stylized scenes make him cringe.
Tonight, in his own review he rates zero.

A happy ending? Internet dating
his lonely supporting cast just waiting.



Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, Descant, Island, Magma, The Malahat Review, Southerly, & Westerly. His latest book is Lost Language of the Heart, Ginninderra (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.