Poetry Feature by Emma Gover The Shed Behind the house stood an old shed, boarded up, bolted tight, its contents unknown. Like a roadside rust-out car shashie, its flaking paint and sagging struts revealed a symbiotic intimacy with the yard. Sweet potato vines snuggled the stumps and spiders carved webs in the awnings while crows sighted hoppers from the rooftop. Seasons through, and the shed simply stood, housing its mystery. On long summer afternoons when the sun hung hot and low and sweat dribbled from bottled beer and forehead, we’d bask on the patio. In the background stood the shed, our ox. Occasionally we’d speculate on what lay inside; a collector’s trove, trays of exotic seeds, piles of blank paper or a single mothball kicked into the corner. Friends would come and friends would go, but always we shared a secret. A secret shared, but to no one known. Though secrets tend to die, especially at house parties. Massive Attacks Paradise Circus plays from speakers run on dropped wiring from the kitchen above. Paper globes of yellow light strung like fruit on the low branches of a Jacaranda. The mellowed intoxication of all is sweet and thick. Hidden in the background, by the shed, two shady figures cosset curiosity. Tentatively at first they fondle the pad-locks. Eagerness grows as hands frisk the sheds windows and doors. A sharp reflection glints from a garden spade lying in the grass. Spade in hand, a head height blackened window is shattered. Two figures lift and squeem tightly through. Inside in the blackness, they make love. Morning dawns, filling unseen space. Inside the shed two naked bodies envelope beneath an empty claw-foot bath. Residing in the tub, a cheap stuffed pink flamingo from a carnival stall. A pink flamingo, and I put it there and smeared it in guilt.
Jacaranda
Roseneath
Untitled
The storm brought a jacaranda branch through the window. Sopping purple bells tickle our ears as we push the branch out. A wall of rain blows us dripping while we extract slippery shards of glass from the wooden frame. Fingers assemble tape and rustling plastics, we fill the space.
French doors and hung windowpanes shimmer with liquid movement as rain falls sharp and hard. Strategically placed kitchen pots catch raindrops dripping from the ceiling. The wallpaper fills with bulges at the cornice that must be burst with a knife. Tears across the walls reveal where this has happened.
Nighttime jeevies crawl and creep, Like insects with one-hundred feet. Scathing slowly on supple flesh, Darkness drools and moods regress. Prancing prickles prime the nerves, Pulses a race beneath the skin. Whereof these happenings within? Those of you who sleep at night, Spare a thought for us who lie in fright!
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