Stephen Gilfedder: ‘Christ in the Freezer’ and ‘Ironman’

Christ in the Freezer
On the day of the Port Arthur massacre

On a not-so-good Sunday the twenty-eighth of April
we raise the last of this year’s hot cross buns
well past their use-by date, the rows of Easter hosts
brought from body bags, lying cryogenic on the racks.
We break them off in multiples for the netball kids
in an echoing galley turning dark with a television
irradiating news in a language we are yet to learn.
Muted now we watch the crawler on the screen
adding to the numbers covering the landscape.
I hand out the revived offerings like communion,
part father, part sembling priest for each person
old and young gunned down among the ruins,
these hosts re-created to perfection, the afterlife
cheated, seeming casualties reborn into life itself.
Only one is left, covered and returned to its cell,
pathetic body of Christ hidden from the light.

Stephen Gilfedder

Ironman
for Roger Donazzan

I have survived two children and the never-never,
Resisted tattooists and purveyors of Max Factor
Would-be studders of ear, piercers however clever
Of orifice or organ, each nipple is intacta.

Secure in religion and footy team means zapping
The unknown—the New Age is covered A-Z,
The wife’s not a partner and I draw the line at rapping,
Sex apart from jokes seldom mentioned out of bed.

Christmas party offers fell flat, cross-dressing glamour
Just satin running shorts and leathers for the Harley
And an omelette shade sarong (non-Dorothy Lamour)
Smuggled in plain paper from holidays in Bali.

My lifelong dream is of dying and extreme unction
A whip-round, three cheers from mates and that’s my lot,
In the Club Lounge, tanked, at an all-male function,
Flashing lights signalling the accumulator jackpot.

Stephen Gilfedder