“ATTN: Cleaner” and “Plumeria Cuttings”

By Jake Dennis

ATTN: Cleaner

Look, all over our new
carpet— silvery and
meandering.— Can you 

see it? That sticky, diaphanous streak
—a journey—struck
there, on our floor.—

From the front door
to my foot. Here.—Do you
see the marks? Look,

here’s the culprit—stuck
curled, dry, worm.—Do you know what did it?—
The white moon

was hanging, out of place
no doubt.—No dirt
in here, thanks.—We’ll have

no carcasses, inside.— We can clean it
away— nice 
and tidy,—yeah? 

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Plumeria Cuttings

For Nana 

From her backyard to mine, like totems struck
in broken soil, their knuckled trunks beckon
like op shop curios carved from chelonian shells. 

Swallowing summer’s sweat-heavy tonnage of light
they strengthen their resolute muscles, blessing the outstretched 
fingers of breeze with perfume as prized as jade. 

Searching the moonlit pearl of petals whiter than tofu, 
treasure-esurient ants, teased into madness,
scout and batter the flowering nectarless curls. 

Such mischievous trees, like packets of money 
secretly handed to me when parents could not see, 
were introduced to this sun-bitten rock 

from Myanmar’s machine-gun surveilled corners
like the luckier ones of my family tree.
Cosmopolitan foreigner, tight-lipped refugee, 

you colour this land boldly, splashed with yellow
brighter than Van Gogh or Rothko’s fields, 
captivating as a gold-leaf pagoda, 

with the smiley appeal of Mr. Happy,
on petals pure and white, tissue-fresh and light.
Printed on magnets like beach sunsets for sale

or plucked to tuck behind a ladyboy’s ears, your gifts 
caress islander and tourist nipples and hips,
offer themselves on the ancient altars of holy temples,

rest tossed on the body-swallowing dirt.
Your versatile scent, that portent of Pontianak, 
sprayed and bathed on bounties of fabulous flesh, rises from wax.

Living heirloom, gemstone of my inheritance,
the knowledge of tending you passes 
like white lightning from grey-haired clouds 

to earth’s brown remembering magnet. 
My grandmother’s language-locked love, wordlessly blooms
like her jasmine rice, endlessly served.

Separated from her sisters, a single flower 
in a Ling Long porcelain bowl, floats on sunlit water
peaceful and knowing as Buddha’s smile.

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Jake Dennis: @PoetOfJazz Burmese-Australian entertainer. Poetry: Cordite, The Disappearing, Eureka Street, FourW, Galavant SG, Lost Coast Review USA, Page Seventeen, Poetry NZ, Quadrant, Recoil, Seagift, Stars Like Sand, Strutco UK, Voiceworks, Westerly, Wet Ink, etc. Awards: Right Now: Human Rights Poetry Prize, Now & Then: Literature Prize, KSP Young Writer-In-Residence, etc. Performance: Beautiful Girls: Bruno Mars Show, Come Fly With Me, The Glass Menagerie, KSP Asian-Australian Voices Festival, Like Blown Smoke, Madonna: Rebel Heart DVD, PCWC, Perth Poetry Club, Short and Sweet, Twin Cities Radio, Voicebox, WAPI Poetry Festival, Wetlands Centre, etc. BA (Communication and Cultural Studies, Curtin University). www.poetofjazz.com 

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