Sarah Temporal and Damien Becker: Poetic Express - Northern Rivers comes to Melbourne
Sarah Temporal: Three Secrets
In the back of the ambulance / this tiny-home-on-wheels for ghosts/ the devil is recruiting/ my spine is ticking/ and I am trying to find the language/ to hold this moment.
I apologise/ to the paramedic/ wearing a Roosters shirt/ that she would miss the first half/ of the big game/ it hurts/ to think how much / I have disrupted/ the lives of others, adjusted/ expectations of time itself/ to justify this/ shortened version/ of a worthwhile life.
In the back of the ambulance/ I google/ 'how old child remember dead parent'/ and think: little one, you will be told so many times/ how much you look like your dad. I add up/ the sum total of my life/ tapping hard on the calculator app/ decide that/ my life insurances/ won't quite cover the mortgage/ will give my wife one more thing/ to worry/ I worry all the time.
In the back of the ambulance/ I think/ I might find the language to hold/ this moment/ fold stone words in thirds/ to make phrasing/ that serves the purpose/ of those urgent verses/ I'm searching for/ birthing newborn rhythms/ to match the quickening/ pulse I can't count anymore. I can't count anymore. I can't count. I can't. I
will/ find the language to hold this moment. But it's hard to write the history/ of disabled shame in one poem/ there's only 44 sounds/ a white mouth can make/ I can't spell it out with only 26 letters/ can't shout loud enough in the confines/ of this live stream tiny screen/ you could scan my fingerprint/ if you're interested/ but how to capture/ that left hook/ the textbooks/ call internalised ableism.
In a system as disciplined as this one/ any faulty gene sequence must be silenced/ though perhaps/ even if no one else is listening/ I can find the words to make the system/ break a little/ flick this brittle brick of salt/ into the gears of oppression/ hasten its final years of corrosion.
In the back of the ambulance/ I accept/ I may be a short-term Dad/ but I am still proud/ so I back my photos/ up to the cloud/ it's funny that we send those things to heaven/ that we want to keep forever/ and people always/ look different in photos/ after they die/ like a filter has been applied/ but in the absence of finding the right language/ a picture will suffice to hold this moment/ at least for my child.
credit: Red Dirt Poetry Festival
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