Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two November-December 2024
Free Association, poems by Magdalena Ball.
Free Association
What did you rebel against, father
eyes shut, turning slowly
like a falconer, letting the bird go.
Every day something new is lost
a pendulum you set in motion
years ago, when you first walked away
feet gliding across the asphalt
bitumen and stone aggregate sidewalk
not looking back.
Tracking your decline as you dropped
gloves, perches, hoods, the detritus
of attachment, the way you sloughed
off your roots so insistently
emancipation playing across
your lips while you pretended
to fight, burying anarchy
with its true name fear
under the growing flowers
Impatiens, Marigolds, Zinnias
of your new home, a life
somewhere else, pretty and languid
a scaffold to disguise the predator
you wouldn’t name so I couldn’t ask.
Annuals returning year on year
easy conversation flowering
above a recurring dream
about something you cannot find.
Not everything comes back
your intolerance for crowds
the harsh chant, desire
tradition, connection, inheritance
and time, always time
that nasty trick twisting its body
round yours, promising freedom
all the while turning a cage.
You spent your time away
the long line of abandoned children
playing with weeds in concrete cracks
waiting for the call
the rising windstorm, a penny
a dime, a birthday card
like a long vowel held till breath ran out
a phoneme, negation, uprising.
Everything you gathered
as rogue growth
without you
rising in spite of neglect.
Do you remember anything?
Can you still smell cordite
on my hands, those crayoned placards
do-it-yourself tear gas burning the eyes
torn flag, a renunciation, insurrection
marching against an absence you failed to fill.
You wore the t-shirt of flawed ideology
green letters across the chest
Those days are gone. History is gone but
I’m still here, on the cracked pavement
waiting for the return, listening
for falcon’s wings, after all these years.
Note: “Free Association” was a finalist in the Mercedes Webb-Pullman Poetry Award (it remains unpublished).
Sylvia
I have given away
every artefact, every leather-bound
book you left me.
Your silver kiddish cup
the brass mezuzah with its
Deuteronomy scroll.
How many times
have I tried to ring
the doorbell, waiting in the cold
too young for our
imagined conversation
lipstick staining your teeth.
Your cello is now
in someone else’s
drawing room, peacock
feathers and light
laminex tiles, moth-riddled spices
death in three quarter time.
I wait for you to resolve
after all this time
to finally buzz me in
smiling with the forgiveness
of absence, laughing
come in come in it’s all true.
Bhakti
Devotion as great
as yours
cannot be bound
parcelled out
as absolution from
a wealthy guru
yellow wattles flowering
an offering
leaning into astringent air
the weight of need
heavy on your lips.
Everything changes.
a childhood home
a body broken
into its constituents.
We’re all equal in the end
shrine, petals
branching in formation
a spiral
distribution of seeds
both of you are gone now
master and disciple
the ghastly pink lotus
and rolls royces
outlived you both.
Maybe it ended with nirvana
maybe just ashes.
@ Magdalena Ball
Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer, interviewer, Sustainability Manager, Vice President of Flying Island Poetry Community and Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, one of Australia’s most respected online review sites, which has been publishing high quality book reviews since 1997. Her work has appeared in an extensive list of journals and anthologies, and has won or listed in many local and international awards, including, in 2023/24, the QRAA Ekphrasis Challenge, the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition, the SCWC Poetry Award, the Liquid Amber Press poetry prize, the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s international poetry prize, and the Woollahra Digital Literary Award, as well as shortlisting for a Red Room Poetry Fellowship. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, most recently, Bobish, a verse-memoir published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2023.