i.
I hate the fishing-with-dad trope, but you are my dad, I am a writer, and you took me fishing.
We go fishing with my primary school class,
An excursion in grade three.
I am proud-chested to have a father who
Knows what to do with the endless
Tangle and tackle of fishing
Lines and hooks.
I’ve always preferred
The fresh water of
Creeks and lakes
To chlorine pools,
The dirt and algae of another
Ecosystem, independent of our own.
I slip my feet out of sneakers and socks
Into ponds made of snow,
The dank sludge of tadpoles and
Mosquito larvae.
You pass me the rod to hold, my
Small arms tire quickly.
The grab and gravity of water
Feels like a bite, but isn’t.
You catch the biggest fish of all
My classmates and their parents.
You pretend I caught it, reeled
The flailing body in
With only a little help.
You wink at me as I
Lap up admiration
From the boys who usually
Call me ugly, and push each other
Into me, exclaim disgust at
Accidentally touching me.
The trout has a slash of
Pink down its side, like a sunrise.
You show me how to slip
Fingers under the gills
Into slippery flesh and something
That feels like cartilage or gristle,
Its throat resting in the Y of my hand.
*
ii.
The intimacy of shaving
Boar-bristle brush
Clinks the side of the sink.
Lather a bar of soap.
Intrigue of morning
Grooming rituals, a
Longing to take part
(Mother would not let me
take her birth-control pills).
“Why do you shave, daddy?”
“So I don’t scratch you with
my whiskers when I kiss you.”
“Can I shave too?”
“You don’t have any whiskers!”
When you cut your chin or
cheeks, you suck a leaf of tissue
And stick it to the wound.
You dab soapsuds
soft over my cheeks,
shave them away with
a hooked finger.
When I am older I
Shave my legs in the shower,
Quick and rough against the
Timer –always a banging
On the door and “too long in there,
The tank’s nearly empty.”
The razor constantly
nicks the same thin
slice of ankle that takes
forever to stop bleeding.
In a hotel room bath
My lover shaves my legs
With care I’ve never taken for
Myself, delicate and hardly
Touching, and not one
Spot of blood.
*
iii.
How to build a house
You built this house with your
Hands, so it was like your hands
Sheltered us, held us.
Building a house is like
Building a story;
(Houses have storeys too)
there is a structure to it.
You have your foundations,
Your themes, your characters,
Your plots
Of land.
Poetry is different.
You can’t plan it the same way;
You walk in one direction and
End up somewhere different
(but no less honest).
Primo Levi writes that
writing is like manual
labour:
“You make a plan, at least
mentally, an outline, a
design, and then you try
to make a product as close
as possible to the plan.”
I begin with the shape of it.
You cut your hand open on a
Metal brace. The skeleton of the
East-facing wall. Your blood,
Your sweat. Literally
in this house.
You needed stitches, couldn’t
Work for weeks, though
It didn’t stop you trying.
*
iv.
Chicken Necks
Collapsing into the weeks after
feels too easy, lubricated by
whiskey and wine.
Were you dressed in
blue? You were always
shrouded in blue. Blue flannel,
blue jeans, button shirts,
blue eyes, blue mood.
Blue fingers and lips in
winter. Circulation of your
blood too weak to
keep you warm.
Every muscle stiff, shivering
in woollen socks and thermals.
I sleep with my hands
clasped between my
thighs to keep them warm
through the night. My feet
can almost touch the fire and
still feel cold.
In a market square, the sight
of plucked chickens
strung up by their necks
is too much for me. The air
Thins in my lungs, my hands
feel numb and cold with sweat.
I find the nearest bathroom
to retch up what I haven’t eaten.
*
v.
Howling
In the night, I let it out, a
Caged animal, loose in the
paddock. Grass up to my knees.
It screams its freedom,
Beats hooves on packed dirt
Until they bruise and crack and bleed.
*
vi.
Hecate
It was once considered
a sin to suicide, so those
who did could not be
buried in consecrated ground.
The were buried then at
crossroads, in the hopes their
malign ghosts would not
find ways back to haunt their homes.
A Christian superstition that lacks empathy.
But the pagan gods come to find you;
Hecate guards the crossroads.
You’ll recognise her by her
three faces, and three black dogs.
I leave offerings –a stick of incense,
A jar of honey, a snippet of hair –
At the crossroads I walk,
So she will know to guide you
Over the river Styx and on
To the summerlands.
*
Vince Ruston (24) edits poetry for Voiceworks and dabbles in writing across all forms. They also dabble in gardening, sewing, feminist philosophy and witchcraft. They live with their fiancée and two cats named Persephone and Vivienne. They have just completed their Honours in creative writing through RMIT university.
