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Alan Wearne
from ‘Those were strange days...’
The Lovemakers Book One was published by Penguin Australia in 2001 and was awarded the 2002 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Book of the Year, The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and the 2002 Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Australian Poetry.
The Lovemakers Book Two was published by ABC Books in February 2004.
This one-sestina excerpt (an epilogue to the story of Carrie and Gary) is from The Lovemakers Book Two, Part Fifteen: ‘Those were strange days, strange days indeed!’ and is about 2 printed pages long.
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Characters: Neil: into reminiscence Sal: gallery owner The Mentor: book launcher Deedee: interviewer Kim: remaker, somewhere Barb, Dave: viewers Carrie: bride Gary: groom Carrie’s mum Benny: friend/eulogist Amanda: friend |
Claire: girl Friday Bess: self-discoverer Geoff: bishop Leo: deceased Hannah: senator Karl: into reminiscence Craig: remaker, everywhere Craig’s friends and associates: The ex father-in-law, Dougie, Digby, ‘Gibbo’ Gibb OA, Osbourne, Dixie, Steve Sodd, Fella/ Hotshot, Joy, Lacy, The Moose, Adrian, Sophie Phil: small businessman |
Carrie marries Gary
for Diane Black
Benny took Carrie to the airport. Her mother
having flown Business Class ‘With all them captains of industry . . .’
Benny sensed that till the tension broke
and he, Carrie or both of them cried
Stop! Stop! Stop! such inanities were ceaseless.
‘I like it,’
her daughter got informed, ‘how your fiancé’s not about.’ They drove away
in silence.
But Benny, who fancied he’d a way
with ladies, was primed to woo the mother.
(Besides, offering her his guest room he needed to.)
‘I like it
here,’ his guide to Darlinghurst commenced, ‘the one true industry
round these parts is coffee drinking . . .’ words so bland they cried
out for That, and a touch of sodomy! (This idea plain broke
him up!)
The old bat loved Benny’s place: ‘Well you’re not broke,’
she sniggered and sent her girl away.
Carrie visited Amanda, they talked of sex, of love, then slightly cried.
By now they were such friends, Carrie and ‘Reverend Mother’
(as she never tired of calling her).
But after the sex industry
what remained but love? Often she lay awake and asked
(between me, myself and I): Like it?
and the reply always returned You reckon I like it!
Some pal of Gary’s, one who would certainly never go broke,
paid for both wedding and reception. It was an industry
keeping up with the old girl: two glasses in and she was away!
‘So Benny, the rumour is you lean . . .’ But it was useless to snap Mother!
(not when you’d been embarrassed since birth) to have cried
that once was to have cried
a thousandfold.
‘Marriage?’ as Gary smiled his good cop smile, ‘Yeah I like it. . .’
Amanda, Carrie’s after-a-fashion mother-
figure was telling her, ‘This is where your luck is. Go for broke
and fold those other men away.’
Yet it would be a strange industry,
this contained, ambiguous cop industry.
Okay, she doubted that Gary had ever cried,
yet like some lead in ‘Neighbours’ or ‘Home and Away’
he was caring, reliable, fun: and this had to be acknowledged I like it
like that . . .
Nattering broke
her reverie. Guess who was going on about the wedding dress? Mother,
still slaving-on in the mother industry:
‘She near broke my heart the way she looked but I like it
I really do.’
Benny gave the bride away. Amanda cried.
This poem is in the form of a sestina.
A page on this site explains the form.
it is made available here for personal use only, and it may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, or used for any other purpose
http://www.austlit.com/a/wearne/sestinas3.html