Compelling & vibrant, honest & deeply ethical: Stuart Barnes launches Airplane Baby Banana Blanket by Benjamin Dodds

Norman, Oklahoma—An Early Evening in 1964

A rich red sauce waits in a stainless bowl
set aside until Charlie Brown’s bedtime.
When Jane has fed and bathed the ape
Maury our good doctor will barbecue his wife
some ribs. His sauce is basic but good:

catsup
Worcestershire
a dash of Tabasco
some garlic
lemon juice
a decent amount of honey

Their impatient early-diner climbs
into his highchair, rocks it
on inadequate legs.

Jane berates the noisemaking and stirs
a pot of oatmeal and vitamins
not expecting or prepared for
the spring-loaded leap that lands his screams
on top of the bench and unloads the bowl
all over our fourth and final player
Cocky the Moluccan cockatoo
the scene’s sorry clown who’s also
allowed in the kitchen of course.

She was right to erect her salmon-pink
crest in split-second anticipation
of the shitstorm’s approach but too
little too late to shield her from
the sweet-smelling shadow
she’ll wear like a wound
until next year’s moulting.

And now here comes Jane
after a moment of absence with an air
rifle aimed and fired just above Charlie
Brown’s greedy feeding
sacrificing a window
to teach a salient lesson.
Children use their manners
in the happy home
of the Temerlins.

**

Good Grief, Charlie Brown

Where shrieks of bedlam
are the norm, calm
pricks the ears.

It draws our good doctor
outside to a space
where chaos

can be briefly contained
if not controlled.
Pinned high

to the mesh wall of a cage
once meant to house
exotic birds

is the silence’s source
tangled bundle
swaddled papoose

delivery from a hateful stork.
The chimp is dead
at the age of four—

hung out, wrung
out, suffocated
by torsion

done in by boisterous play
and the squeeze
of his own security blanket.

More Linus than Charlie Brown.

‘Good Grief, Charlie Brown’ makes reference to characters from the Peanuts© comic strips by Charles M. Schultz.

**

This Woman’s Work

The airplane flight and the act of taking Lucy away from her mother had been for Jane the symbolic equivalent of the act of giving birth.
…………………………….—Maurice Temerlin, Lucy: Growing Up Human

In exchange
………..for a daughter
………..………..Jane Temerlin
………..………..………..offered a Coke.
Such sweetness
………..tickles the tongue
………..………..and masks the
………..………..………..phencyclidine
that allowed Bob
………..and Mae Noell to pull
………..………..from fortressed arms
………..………..………..something pink
and rare.
………..Somewhere above Alabama
………..………..passengers nod
………..………..………..congratulations
to a mother
………..tending a covered
………..………..bassinet, hushing
………..………..………..gentle reassurance
to a child she calls
………..Lucy.

‘This Woman’s Work’ takes its title from a Kate Bush song of the same name from her album The Sensual World (EMI, 1989). Bob and Mae Noell were the owners of a roadside zoo in Florida where Lucy was born.

**………..**

These three poems are taken from the opening of Airplane Baby Banana Blanket (Recent Work Press, 2020) by Benjamin Dodds. The collection interprets events from Lucy: Growing Up Human, the 1975 memoir of psychotherapist Dr Maurice Temerlin who participated in an infamous cross-fostering experiment under the auspices of the University of Oklahoma. During the 1960s and 70s, Temerlin and his wife Jane raised a chimpanzee named Lucy as their ‘daughter’ in the family home alongside their young son.

Benjamin Dodds is a Sydney-based poet who grew up in the Riverina of New South Wales. His work has appeared in Best Australian Poems (2014), Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, Meanjin, Southerly, Cordite, Rabbit, The Sun Herald and The Australian, and has also been broadcast on ABC Radio National. He co-developed and co-judged the inaugural Quantum Words Science Poetry Competition in 2018. He is also a poetry reader for Overland. Benjamin is the author of Regulator (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014) and Airplane Baby Banana Blanket (Recent Work Press, 2020). His website is BenjaminDodds.com.

Compelling & vibrant, honest & deeply ethical: Stuart Barnes launches Airplane Baby Banana Blanket by Benjamin Dodds

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