For the Women of All the Dead Heroes

The poem - For the Women of All Dead Heroes
has been published in the anthology
Hidden Desires.
Hidden Desires brings together
the voices of contemporary Australian women
of several generations.
The stories and poems traverse themes
such as memory, desire, thwarted love and regret
in a moving and often witty range of pieces.

Hidden Desires is published by
Ginninderra Press
www.ginninderra press.com.au

FOR THE WOMEN OF ALL THE DEAD HEROES

HMAS Sydney, lost in battle
with the German raider, Kormoran,
off the West Australian coast
near Carnarvon,
November 19th, 1941.

Is that me
that iron woman
forever waving off her hero?

Can you hear
from that place of garlanded mermaids
and siren songs?

Your loins are hard and moist, my love.
I feel your corded muscles against my softness.
My milky breasts leak upon your chest.
Our daughter laughs and gurgles
while we make our son.

Your lips are mine.
My body fires to your caress.
I cry my desire
and awake
to touch a vacant place.

The hope that blazed has faded
to this wizened old woman
who now is me.

And you.
A tiny seagull spreading its wings
on a dome of glass.


Short story - Excerpt from Waiting for the Train, which has been published in Hidden Desires

"Minna," her mother called from the verandah. "Can you see the train?’
Minna climbed the peppercorn tree and stared southwards across the flat treeless plain in the direction from where the train came. "No, Mumma.’
Minna's mother closed the gates at the rail crossing when the train came. It was her father's job, but he was usually out rabbit trapping, or kangaroo shooting, or doing a bit of fencing for a pastoralist. Minna and her mother closed the gates even when he was home.
The train arrived every two weeks at the little railway siding. There weren't many goods to unload. "We only buy the basics," said one of the pastoralist’s wives, who came in with her husband to pick up the station supplies.
The country was in drought. There was the big flood and afterwards scarcely any rain.
The train was usually late. At the time of the big floods, it didn't come for two months. Minna’s family ran out of food except for a half bag of flour and the roo meat her father killed. Minna had really looked for the train then.
Her father had growled. "It will take weeks for the floods to go down." He had drunk his last bottle of beer, smoked his last cigarette and been bad-tempered ever since.
Minna kept out of his way. She didn't want a thump like
he had given her mother.