Time Series Poems
by Anupama Pilbrow
Burning an Effigy in My Friends’ Driveway Poem
One evening we are in my friends’ back garden
burning an effigy in the driveway hiding from
the street and whooping as the giant flames
are scorching the effigy and catching. It is a
turning point in our lives we are saying we are
gathering all manner of filth and debris from
ourselves and pushing it together into a putty
which we are manipulating into the form of
the effigy. I am pulling out chunks of my hair
from my scalp and from my armpit I am ripping
bits off from my nails and toenails and from
hangnails and pulling at scabs all these mementos
my friend is using a blunt scissor to scraping away
dry skin into a fine powder and I gather the
paste that collects under my unwashed fingernails
my other friend is flossing and collecting the plaque
and tartar that gathers there and moulding it into
teeth for the effigy. Years and years of living is
in the effigy the products of our bodies is this
decaying soft thing that we despise and
now we are taking turns to say to the effigy
you are everything that is wrong with me you
are the bad days and the bad years and all
my headaches and the fact that I hate my
job you are my loneliness and the time I got
bangs (we put the bangs on the effigy) and you
are the times I neglected my friends and broke
promises I had made you are my sorrows and
grievances you are the sum of our total
200 odd years of living you are the cells from my
birth you are the original sin of my being born I
am so grateful for the tartar and the armpit hair
which hardens my teeth and protects the delicate
skin in my armpit I am so grateful for my dull job
that strengthens my imagination and hardens my
heart to construct effigies with my friends I am
happy I have learned all my lessons you are me.
My friend sprays the grotesque body putty with
hairspray and with a giant wand throwing out a
roaring arm of fire we are watching the effigy crackle
and light and burn down into a crisp shell. We are
seeing the effigy charring and shrivelling and we
are cheerful and clapping and singing and swigging
beer and reminiscing and saying our farewells and
feeling a relief like walking into the steaming evening
air after a midnight swim in the ocean and my friend
crumbles the blackened shell into bite-sized pieces
which we are taking one bite and handing it along
biting and biting until is gone and we are ceremonially
chewing and swallowing and making our peace.
Watching a Simulation of the Birth of the Universe Poem
I am repotting my little plants giving them some tasty compost
as a treat watering them in with a seaweed solution loving and
cleaning the terracotta in the sun feeling my body sweating
and my eyes are blinding in the afternoon light and I am putting
away my bag of soil and it is bursting in my face and I am accidentally
inhaling a lot of soil and I am having a shower and cleaning all the
soil under my fingers and scrubbing them and scraping out the
mucus from my nose and inspecting it looking for soil particles
and coughing and hacking into my hands so I can spread out the
expectorate on my palms and hunt through for any specks of
brown and I am feeling in my chest every breath thinking if I can
feel a tightness or any evidence of the dust that has gone in them
and then I am looking up Legionnaires Disease and I am thinking
about legionella and aspergillosis and and feeling afraid for my life
and thinking do I need to make an appointment with my doctor and
telling her that I inhaled quite a lot of soil and I am feeling my
throat and sinuses drying out and I am noticing every ache and
pain and gently panicking that I might die from gardening and how
everything carries some hidden risk of death even gardening and I
am also feeling awe and thinking fondly of how many living things
are everywhere at all and how delicate is my hold on life even the
bacteria on my own skin can kill me and I am thinking how even
when our species is gone (which will be soon) there will still be living
things everywhere and how comforting and how quickly life formed
on our planet and how enormous our universe is and how ordinary
my own life is where are the aliens are they living ordinary lives are
they afraid of death and then I am watching a simulation of the birth
of the universe and I am seeing the unmistakable evidence that
actually we are entirely alone in this giant expanse one single blip
of activity in a terrifying long timeline of total nothingness and when
we are gone it will all be quiet and eventually the cockroaches and
algae will be quiet too and it doesn’t matter if it happens to me early
because of legionella or not because suddenly I am feeling so sad and
so lonely that in so many billions of years really we have seen nobody
else but our own earthly kind.
Time is Neither Here Nor There Poem
It is time for eating dinner and I am
chopping the curly leaf kale to make
some vegetable the knife is both too
sharp and too blunt so that I am cutting
slow fast and ragged and I cut deep
into my thumb through the nail halfway
in where the bone must be I am sure
and yes of course it is hurting a lot but
I wash it and putting a bandage on it
so I can finish dinner. After eating I am
cleaning up the pots and chopping board
and the bandage is getting wet in the
washing up water the wound is feeling
painful and I am thinking fine I will see
how it is tomorrow. Again it is getting
wet when I am washing my face and
again when I am getting up during the
night and having to wash my hands. Still
the wound is feeling sore and too wet
I sleep again and in the morning I am looking
at the wound which looks the same only
wrinkly still too deep now the nail is soft
and white from the bandage and I smell
the wound it smells OK like flesh. I am
keeping the wound clean and dry not
using that hand, wearing cling wrap and
a plastic bag on it I am eating dry foods
all day I don’t wash anything I am careful
not even to shower because I want it to
get dry and make a scab or protective
covering I am passing some few days
living dry eating dry only wetting the wound
by accident and I open the bandage and
have a look and still the wound is all soft
and the nail still white and flexible not the
way that a nail should be. I am starting to
think something is wrong this is not how I
am remembering previous wounds to heal
in these few days there should be some
changes I should be seeing some healing
but it is still wet and too open a week passes
and I am back to living my life as normal
thinking if I live as normal then the wound
will heal as normal another week passes
and after a shower I am opening the bandage
so I can apply an ointment and observe to see
if there is any progress I peel off the bandage
and still the wound is there and same as it has
been. I am smelling it thinking is there
something wrong has it become infected
what is happening still it smells like wet
bandages and ointment and underneath
a smell like wet flesh that hasn’t dried in
a long while and all of this is also normal
to me but not normal because it is taking
far too long. I am afraid now and also
becoming so angry at the thumb feeling sick
of this sloppy thumb so useless for all the
human needs I have so clean and still not
changing and I think I will make you regret
it wound you will be thinking twice now
you won’t be so happy resting on your
laurels thinking I will do the work for you
and I am wiping it along the sink thinking
now you can have some dirt you silly wound
eat some dirt! And I am feeling reckless I throw
off my towel and racing the lip of the wound
across the floor and plunging it down into the
drain there in the centre of the room so
I can wiggling it around where there is all
dirt I cannot even see. I am dressing myself in
old clothes from the bottom of the laundry
basket I am putting on my evening gloves over
the unwashed wound and I am dancing
around the room pouring sour milk into
the glove and a piece of rotting banana I
go out to the garden and plunge the wound
glove and all into the earth until I am feeling
the dirt and soil and little wormy things
starting to wriggle into the fabric of the
glove and starting to nibble around the soft
fraying edge of the wound every hour I
am finding some new and filthy item to
rub across the wound I am scraping off
the dusty grease on the rangehood and
pushing it into the crease of the wound
and I find the hollowed carcass of some
insect by the window which I am grinding
into dust to anoint the wound I am finding a
sludge in the fridge which looks ripe and
exciting to feed the wound it is growing
hard and harder now losing the wet and
sloppy lip I am feeding it ashes from the
corner of the oven and I scrape off the dust
on my bookcases I am taking lint from the
dryer and teasing it over the edges of the
wound like a cotton candy wig the wound
happily is accepting each gift of filth
and I am feeling gleeful and free of all
expectations to be the caretaker of the
wound and thinking the flesh can take care
of itself and each day I am feeding it worse
and worse watching with great joy as the
skin is hardening and the nail becoming
like diamond and the fraying edges of the
wound are closing in and knitting themselves
together on the final day the wound is open
I am looking for a cocktail of grime to see it
home and I take the wound outside where
I can push it up under cars and swipe it
around in the layer of muck and hold it
under a dripping vent and crumble into it
soggy mushrooms I find growing on a wooden
telephone pole until I am finally hearing it
sealing up completely with a quiet pop and
thinking of a fond goodbye to my warm and
wet companion of so many weeks and months
and I am going home to wash it all away.
Anupama Pilbrow is the editor of The Suburban Review. She studied mathematics at The University of Melbourne. In 2015, she received the Dinny O’Hearn Fellowship for her manuscript the ravage space. Her poems, reviews, and essays have been published in journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit Poetry Journal, JEASA, Southerly, and The Hunter Anthology of Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry. Read her chapbook Body Poems, out with Vagabond Press 2018. Her work often deals with diaspora, dialogue, exchange, and gross stuff.
