Three Poems - by Coral Carter

after the slam

someone ordered a bloody maria
someone didn’t want to be there
someone claimed to be smashed
someone couldn’t really tell
someone’s light brought the moths
someone’s voice was a bell
someone was talking nonsense
someone was capable of anything
someone fell through glass
someone was skewered with shards
someone’s sex drive was in overdrive
someone didn’t know the way home
someone was a honeypot
someone was over the Moon
someone was wrangling the bees
someone kissed someone
someone did somebody else
someone wanted to have group sex
someone danced with someone
someone was nobodies boy
someone rejected their fan base
someone passed someone a joint
someone forgot about everything
someone had nothing to tell
someone was guilty as charged
and someone was visiting hell.

Real Question of a Three Day Hangover

My hangover was in its third day and I can't cook
the longest hangover in history grumps son
as he knives chicken breasts
into the tiny pieces he loves
not careless chunks I cut
after relentless years of sating daily hunger
my brain stops on my three day hangover
number one daughter drives me to shop
new to town she forgets the way and so do I
why am I doing all the things
my mother told me not to?
I ask as I wave goodbye
in my socks in the rain.

on the third day of my hangover
words are dead rats from my mouth
long distance daughter scolds
she should be the one going to pub poetry
being deafened by boy bands

The band members
milk fed virgins
soft in obscure message T shirts
and jeans ironed by mum
their equipment unscathed
straight from dad’s well swept garage.

The real question is:
Where are the slim hipped
working class boys
lean as pack wolves
willing to share
at the back of the pub
bulges which strained
in their grease stained jeans
with whoever dared?

The Red and Gold Wedding Sheets

Through the thickness of night
we sleep side by side
in the red and gold wedding sheets from China.

When we bought them our interpreter, Tian, whose name means sky, told me about red. The luckiest of colours means fertility, happiness, harmony. I know it is for sex, war, blood. Red is for sex. I said. She stopped surprised eyed as if she had never heard of such a thing and flushed red.

When we were at the museum, Tian, whose name means sky, told us the Chinese were more highly evolved as they had less hair and were therefore less apelike. We told her that all races have a common ancestor. Hair was a response to environment. She stopped surprised eyed as if she had never heard of such a thing and flushed red.

When we were at the temple of the wild goose I began to chant ohm mani pad ma hum. How you know this, Tian, whose name means sky demanded. After she interpreted the story of a wild goose falling dead from the sky to indicate the spot where the temple was to be erected. She mused: How can this be true? Maybe it isn’t. I replied. She stopped surprised eyed as if she had never heard of such a thing and flushed red.

In our red and gold wedding sheets from China
we are lucky happy harmonious
until we are savage with sex and war and blood.

Coral Carter
Born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, became a nomad but seems settled in Bayswater, Western Australia for now. Barely published. Brought up on Banjo now loves Bukowski. Reads most weeks at the Perth Poetry Club.