5 Poems by Jackson

Please wait to be seated 

Please wait to be seated.
You will be shown to good seats
but you will have to surrender. 

Stand there and wait.
You may be given a public place,
in the centre of the faces and voices,
or a private booth:
a watching space, a listening hush.
You will be ushered by good-looking attendants
but you will have to surrender. 

Observe the rituals.
Listen carefully, ask
clearly and quietly,
behave with respect. 

And let a hungrier person go before you
and let a weaker person hold onto you.
Then wait in silence.
You will be shown. 

From Coracle 

When you dance 

When you dance it’s as if
you gather the music
into yourself,
into the softness
of your diaphragm and belly,
and smear it through your body,
along the long cords of you —
tendons, neurons, axons, veins
spine, lungs, bowels, hips —
and extrude it down the pipes of your lean limbs. 

When you dance you keep your arms
straight by your sides, point and wag
and jerk your hands,
quiver your body like a zephyred leaf,
and stare at your feet, which you shuffle. 

When you dance it’s as if your legs
and arms
and eyes
are pulled toward ground
by the music’s grand
unified force. In all my life 

you’re the only one
I’ve ever met
who dances
like that. 

From lemon oil ; First published in the author's chapbook q finger (PressPress 2011) 

If the rain

If the rain works away our concrete
and steel, to reach and feel
original stone and earth 

If it wears away the metal
rings and brick boxes around street trees
so greenfleshed lives can sway, scented,
in their shelter 

If it knocks out the electric
lines and stops
our train, traps
it for vines and mudwalls 

If it slops the style
out of our hair and the makeup
off our faces, hoses off
our lowrise jeans and highrise boots,
our ghoulgear and bling,
our multitoned helpnessness and hope 

If it grows on our backs
fur and homespun and moss 

From Coracle 

The fisherwoman 

The fisherwoman
in her boat
under the sky,
deep blue above,
deep blue below,
hat
salty, skin
rippled,
waiting,
the fisherwoman
sings.
A soft song
o my love, o my lord,
carry me, float me, rock me, rescue me
a soft song for the fish and the sky
and the broad ocean and all the things on islands
that call to her.
Buildings, streets, people, suits
on green islands
across the ancient ocean,
the endless sleeping sea.
Through the light she sees the islands
and the fish watch
and wait.

From Coracle ; First published in Pixel Papers 

haiku sequence August 2013 

the haiku poet
broad feet
in delicate shoes 

small white feather
facing the stratus sky
a beggar's hand 

spring in the Cultural Centre
lavender tangles
with banksia 

in the city
no-one notices
the ten-metre wall 

a spring seedling
three tiny leaves meet
an enormous shoe 

wind blows out my candle
but not the one
on the banksia bush 

at last a bird
comes close enough
to write about

Bionote

Jackson, based in Western Australia, seeks poems that work whether declaimed loudly or whispered in the mind. She has published two full-length collections and recorded an album . Her poems have appeared in many magazines and will appear in The Western Australian Poetry Anthology forthcoming from Fremantle Press . Jackson is the founding editor of Uneven Floor poetry magazine, unevenfloorpoetry.blogspot.com . She is a doctoral candidate at Edith Cowan University. She offers poets a low-cost help service, Tactful Online Poetry Feedback . Visit Jackson and read more of her poems at proximitypoetry.com .