James Gering 1

James Gering 1

James Gering, poet, diarist and short story writer, is an ASA Poet of the Year, and he's received various international awards for his stories and poems. His writing has appeared in many journals around the world including Meanjin, Cordite, Rattle and Shot Glass Journal. His first collection of poetry, Staying Whole While Falling Apart, was released by Interactive Press in 2021. James lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. There he climbs the cliffs and hikes the trails in search of Beveridge’s wisdom, Ernaux’s emotional truth and Kafka’s dreamscapes. James welcomes visitors at jamesgering.com.

Icarus

Beyond the walls and the steel bars
the sky has no borders.
It bursts forth with mockery.

Daedalus and Icarus crave their freedom.
They devise a plan featuring struts
and feathers and wax.

Moon shards slice window bars.
Father and son clamp on
makeshift wings

and sail into the expanse of dawn
buffeted by gravity
well clear of choppy waves.

White gulls escort Icarus.
He laughs like a boychick, drowning
out his father’s carping.

The heat turns up. Wax drips
and flows. Icarus finds truth
in a feathery spiral and the splash

of a shock, the shock of a splash.
‘I’m drowning,’ he cries out
as a boat passes nearby

timeless as a painting.
On land, a cow moos, a dog barks,
a farmer leans on his plough. |

‘You’re not drowning,’ the farmer shouts,
‘that’s spluttering. Plant your feet
in the shallows and right yourself.’

Icarus flounders onto shore
and proceeds to scarf eggs
with his saviour, sunny-side up.

Insecure Audrey

Glanced out of the kitchen window while setting cocktail prawns
on a platter. Ralph Langer, among guests in the garden, was grinding
something small into the grass under his loafered foot.

Ralph was a savvy fellow – success in landscaping and in picking
a wife – a magnate’s daughter. He watched Audrey
watching him. The prawn in her fingers dripped juice

and she wilted. Ralph sipped Bollinger through his smirk.
Audrey, imagining herself a specimen in a petri dish,
should’ve had a drink, but only indulged in this remedy later –

often at the wedding receptions of friends. One reception stays
etched in her mind. After Bloody Marys in the foyer, she switched
to bottles of champagne at the table – goodbye petri specimen

hello partygoer. Ralph’s clever brother, a manager at a boutique
hedge fund, was seated next to Audrey. When he coolly
asked what she did ‘for a crust’, she said nuclear physics

at which the brother sat up straight, made a show
of topping up her champagne and sought her opinion
on many a subject. He nodded reverentially at her replies.

Decades later, Audrey is a woman more secure in her talents
yet her bemusement over human foibles never wanes, and she’s
prepared to serve cocktail prawns to all-comers at garden parties.

It Takes a Type

The dots are good dots –
robust and connected

like stars making sense
of the sky.

The boxes are good boxes –
tick worthy and tried

ultra-square and accessible
if perplexing for some.

The boxes reject some,
the dots needle some.

Some should try harder:
jump on a wagon or join

a band. Honour the etude
of country and family

of worship, kinship
career-ship and portfolios:

property, paintings and
blue chips

before beneficiaries rally
to manage parents gone

dotty in slippers on a slope
to a cross and a box.