Incognito

Jessica Le Bas

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781869403928
• eBook ISBN: 9781775580935
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

This engaging collection of poetry, split into six sections and written in an intimate and affectionate tone, is wonderfully diverse. The lyrical poems address issues that run the gamut from family, friends, and domestic situations; to children's perception of the world; the seashore; and political situations based on the author's experience as a United Nations worker in the former Yugoslavia.
 
Winner, NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry 2008

1

you’re kidding

another country

She’s drawing in her notebook, miniature people – and now a house, two storeys with stairs going up from one window to another, jagged like the teeth of a saw. Another house, then a road. Two lines wind higgledy-piggledy over the lined page to the margins. Here she draws a letterbox (as big as a house) and next to it a car with hot-cross-bun wheels. She is talking to the people in her notebook. She explains that he is waiting (the man in the car, see his face) for the mail to be delivered. Some big presents will come today.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood between her houses, a swimming pool appears; squiggly blue lines ripple lightly. She draws a bridge – one of those troll-bridge replicas. She tells me it is so the people can walk over their swimming pool and get to their houses. A bridge? (I can’t help myself.) Usually there is a creek or a river under a bridge, perhaps a small stream. People walk around their pools – on paths – not over them. She is unperturbed by my ignorance. Well, she says, this is another country, and one you have obviously not been to, where there are bridges over swimming pools – so.

I watch like an audience. She draws two black flecks in the blue ripples of her swimming pool. They look like the fins of sharks, but I could be wrong.

the PM comes to school

so where’s her own house then

does she have a flash car

is it black

will I get to talk to her

can she understand my language

is she like the Queen with those fake curls and stuff

tell her that I’ve been good, won’t you

and that those boys are behaving now

how will she know which one is the Headmaster

what’s she doing here anyway

well, how come she’s going to open that building

if the boys are already in there

why would she come all this way

when they opened it already

she might be mad about that, you know

when she finds out

will we all wait outside and pretend it’s really closed

I promise not to tell

I think I’ll just watch

do you think she’ll wonder why I’m not talking much

ok, I’ll say hello then

yes, hello Mrs Prime Minister

did you bring the keys with you?

Dead Horse Pinch

i

Top of the pigroot

she asks, where are the dead horses then?

I point to the photograph on the plaque, highlight the terrain

the topography before our eyes – emphasise the vertical slope

the up-down strain on a train of horses.

They should’ve left those horses behind, if they couldn’t hack it.

There were no cars in those days, I say. Horses carried the luggage.

She says, they should’ve gone by plane.

ii

A southern man in a balaclava, padded into his jacket like a bear

opens a paddock gate for his ute. Waves like a friend.

Along the ridge, wind moves the car through turbulence.

iii

Ranfurly

another four square store, another ice-cream.

She licks her dry lips.

Our skin cracks.

the footpath

In the car this morning she says she wants to be A-Brethren cause she is sick of playing with Cherry and Delia and Albert and Georgia and Harry on the footpath, and their table and chairs are getting in the way of the people walking down the street. If she gets to be A-Brethren she can go to their house and they can come to her house and play. They wouldn’t have to take all their babies outside every day.

I tell her that it is more than that. She has to believe in God. She says which one? And is it goin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1 : you’re kidding
• 2 : there’s a love
• 3 : currency
• 4 : incognito
• 5 : journey
• 6 : ends
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright