Little Blue Penguins

Abstract

WORLDLIT.ORG 29 top photo : visitmelbourne . com wong photo : nitch photography Heart” . . . She delights in the melodies, the laid-back beats and guitar riffs, a voice that can somehow carry a tune while sounding like the slow strangulation of a half-wild tom. Max comes into the room during “Undertow.” “Hallelujah,” Luke says. “So can you turn it off before that comes on?” Max says. “Chinese checkers?” Jess asks. Max gives her one of his you’ve got to be kidding me looks and slinks off to his room at the back of the house. “Play your guitar,” Jess yells after him. “Come on Empress of Checkers,” says Luke. “I’ll give you a thrashing.” “Yeah right,” she says, sounding like a billboard for Tui beer. Currawong, wattlebirds, magpie-larks—she’s beginning to warm to the natives here, their sheer numbers and exuberance. Yet when she was last in Wellington she picked up a soft toy in a tourist shop, pressed the button, and listened to the familiar sound. She wishes she’d brought it back even though the silly thing was quite ugly and didn’t look anything like a tui. All over the city, clowning and mimicking, whistling, clucking, and chortling, going crazy with song from the tree in her old backyard . Parson bird, she’d read somewhere. The tuft of white at the throat. She doesn’t like the word parson. It sounds uptight. Undelicious . Parson’s nose. But now Leonard’s moved on to “Morning Glory,” talking to himself, endlessly talking to himself, backed by double bass and something like xylophone or glockenspiel. “Are we moving towards some transcendental moment,” he says, voice long fallen into his shiny black shoes. “That’s right,” he says. “That’s—” Thank God. Luke’s a man of his word, one of the best decisions she’s ever made, and just like that, Leonard’s cut before he can pull off his moment. Jess loves “Suzanne,” “Hallelujah,” “If It Be Your Will” . . . but Glory’s self-talk was starting to get irritating . She puts down her book and goes to the front room. As far from suffering children as any reasonable parent can get. Luke’s already at the table, checkers ready and waiting. “You go first,” she says, wanting to give him half a chance. She puts on a CD and sets the volume low. “I wanna live, I wanna give,” she sings as she clacks a checker over the board. “I’ve been to Wellywood, I’ve been to Redwood, I’ve crossed the ocean for a heart of gold . . .” “Wellywood?” Luke looks up. He’s moved his checker only one place. “Sweetie,” she says, “New Zealand’s not the place you remember —all sheep and mispronounced Maori place names. We’ve had Lord of the Rings, King Kong.” She smiles. Her checker skips over and over. As it finds its way home. Geelong, Australia Little Blue Penguins by Alison Wong dusk, Summerland Beach, Phillip Island here they come rush of learners jerky gear shifts and no idea about cruise control it’s a wonder there one goes tiny tailgater bouncing off a back bumper the odd mamma driving the other way she don’t need no GPS she’s just heading out for shell-grit some lil piece of sanity it’s big lights big city every hole and box and dice full of dinnertime hush little babies don’t you cry the fish are jumping and the grass is high Alison Wong is a fourthgeneration New Zealander living in Geelong, Australia. Her poetry collection, Cup, was shortlisted for Best First Book for Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and her poetry was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2006, 2007, and 2015. Her novel, As the Earth Turns Silver, won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2010 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. She is working on another novel and a memoir about New Zealand, Australia, and China. ...