More poems from Tango of the Widow
Books & Poetry
This week’s Poet’s Corner features a further two poems from Tarla Kramer in South Australia’s Ikara-Flinders Ranges.
Help
A local handyman named Quentin
comes to our rescue.
He’s heard about
the tumour
the five kids
and the unfinished house.
Do you need help?
I gabble an assortment of words.
Do you need help?
He had cancer himself
and God healed him
he can heal Edi too.
But none of that stuff
has any bearing on
the outcome.
When Quentin brings
his band of churchmen
it’s the day-to-day help
and the cheer, watching the
heart of our home take shape,
that gets us through.
And when everything goes pear-shaped later on
he takes in my stepson.
These are the works
that won’t be burned.
Autumn Leaves
Late this year
as if the trees got together
said “don’t remind her”
and stayed green.
But when we get to Laura for the folk fair
Tony says “didn’t Dad die a couple of weeks
after we came here last year?”
And the trees
kick him under the table.
Tarla Kramer grew up in Adelaide and lives in the Flinders Ranges, which is also known by its Adnyamathanha name of Ikara, meaning meeting place. Since graduating from Tabor College’s Creative Writing Program in 2019, she has had poetry published in the Australian journals Cordite, Borderlands and Inscribe, and previously in Poet’s Corner. Her manuscript ‘Odds & Sods’ was one of the three winning collections published in Friendly Street’s New Poets 21 in 2020, while her chapbook collection ‘Poems for the Non-compliant’, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. Today’s poems are from her first full-length book, ‘Tango of the Widow’, from Ginninderra, which was launched at Tabor College in March this year. More about Tarla and her book can be found here.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.
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