Shed, Coastful Boast & Verbatim Poem by Rikia Lizarraga
Baby Teeth is thrilled to be publishing works from Lexicon Innovations Well Fair Project this month!
The project was produced in association with Baby Teeth, the South Coast Writers Centre, and the Merrigong Theatre Company. It’s aim was to give a voice to the experiences of the long term unemployed in the Illawarra through writing and performance. You might have seen performances from participants on our Lit Stage during Viva La Gong last year! We’ll be sharing works from two of the participants as well as our March Features. Here is some poetry and prose from Rikia Lizarraga.
Shed
I was cast to the shed to retrieve soil. It had been well over six months since I had risked an ankle stepping in, but a plant in critical condition pushed me into it.
The shed is dead: no walls, semi-floored, just tin on rotted beams.
As I swung around with my cup of dirt, an eye stopped me. I had put it there when I was eight, and the memory now slapped me with a smile. I had peeled back the wood of the door to draw secret faces, and had tried to press the wood back. Oh the freak out mum had when she found out, my red little hands splintered from this gorilla art but unable to care from the thrill of it.
Back when this shed had walls my clothes were perpetually marked with its chalky residue; always a ‘mum problem’, never a ‘me problem’. This shed was my first theatre, my bestie and I were CEOs here, rednecks, champion soccer players with broken legs, two birthing mothers who had to give birth at the same second. And my personal favourite—two old men who found each other at sea and fought to one-up each other with their tragic backstories.
This was a hothouse of improvised plots. We’d brainstorm on its faded carpet and push all the rusted and sharp gym equipment aside to get it running. The sort of self-improvement here wasn’t for fitness; it was to get a ripped sense of imagination.
When we renovated in my teens, they diagnosed the shed with asbestos. It was gutted and left in this sad, decomposing state. It never felt cancerous until they filled it with these OH&S hazards.
I stood in this skinless shed for a long minute, dodging spiders and reflecting on my fictions. This little room was enormous when it came to forming my passions. My goal for my career in theatre is not to be wealthy; it’s to feel wealthy with warm memories of afternoons in spaces like my shed. Always making something new, regardless of the stage.
Hopefully, though, for an audience that is not just my parents.
Coastful Boast
Leathered skin of speedo’d jerries
Innards wrinkle, cold and clear
Keys jingle, tied to straps
Kids squawk and birds do scream
The sea salt is spackled to the stone
Sand clings on to all our toes
See the small, sun-bleached boats
People only dots on board
Waves chucked back to the shore
You know what you came here for
A coastful boast to well-off friends
This break for you is my space of contemplation
Slather your snakeskin with the oil
My head’s heavy with haze
Pray this sublime will soak right in
Cause I’m sucked dry of endorphins
Your calming weekend, free of 9 to 5
And I sit here unpaid, yeah I’ll be fine
Coastful boast, rich with sunstroke
Coastful boast, you always tan the most
Coastful boast, I wanna go home
Coastful boast, you make me feel alone
We go into the waves, hope they’ll take you away
Toxic people, toxic chats
Joke you’ll be the victim of a shark attack
I loved you friend but now I gotta go
You’ve turned to sea scum, no longer tranquil
But I won’t forget who you were though
Verbatim Poem
To the person who boarded the train at the last second, your bag got stuck in the door. This is why the train is now delayed.
Next stop Thirroul.
