Poems by Stefanie Bennett

THREE DIMENSIONAL UNCLE

… Trying to explain you, crazy Alfie,
The spotted necktie
Or cravat worn
At high-noon:
Waxed moustache, turgid
Aroma of cigar and
Creme de Menthe.
Negotiations and sign language
Outside the school yard
Of The Sacred Heart Academy…
You’ve carted
Plump olives in a brief-case
For the Mother Superior –,
The children.

Each pension day, peddling to and fro
To nowhere on
That ‘malvern star’ with
Its bent wheel.
Pedantics from
The station-master:
“Impossible!
A return ticket to Calabria?”
Shell-shocked, twice christened
By both shores,
World prisoner –
One Easter I took
The gift, the sardine can
You said was ‘full of arrows
That flew from
The blind palms of Saint Francis’

– Promising never to open it. I still haven’t.

Half a lifetime later,
In the nursing home, you’re
Adamantly
Stropping the razor
Before carving
A jackboot
In the bed-sheet.
“Yes. The orderly
Will arrange
Train ticket;
Personal
Effects…
Turn off the rifle-fire
– And leave all the lights on.”
Crazy how others are
As yet
Trying to explain you, Alfie…

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry, a novella and a libretto and poems online with VerseWrights, The CamelSaloon, The Mind(less)Muse, Shot Glass Journal, Dead Snakes and others. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee],she was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 1945.