ALL IS GOOD IN THE PIG

First published in Australia Poetry Journal 11.2.
when the sky rose big and gold the first day unbelievable god said

all is good in the pig and there I was,

Desire, wet as a whistle…

            to whom do the spoils go?

dead mammon, collarbones …

ceramic leopard, cattle, banker’s lamp …

            to whom the spoils? I scream to my career girls.

cast to the top of a pile of pearls, they wake

and want for nothing…

            the wheel of time goes soft …

doom say the anchors, what left to do

but decorate the clouds …

            I scream to my career girls, let’s have a worm farm

or a baby, we are just

dumb enough to make of this life

what we have extracted: culture,

climate, cocktails…

they want the same things they always did …

            girls, I am the last to die …

spilling out of the jaws, ringing in the ears,

don’t mind that, the angel’s tone,

the swing of the two-handed sword resounding …

            figs, husk cherries, lemon,

levitations of the evening,

beautiful, luminous skin …

nobody to bother you, not even with praise,

not even to ask you to leave …

            girls … what wicked sign crackles across the surface of the seas?

… you will be fine, of course, career girls,

you have made it cosy here …

            call on your saints, girls, pray for a little

walk-up apartment, keep faith …

hope is the thing with credenzas, three breeds of crawling vine,

the thing with beer money, glassware, burning wings…

            my beautiful girls. my piggies.

I have seen things. nothing special,

the things of undergrounds, boutiques,

some nights of love… of course the moon …

lusts like the colours in the air, the song of bare feet on the carpet,

the eyes of men, chicken, green olives,

double-handling in the feminised labour market,

moral confusion, sex roles, I have

left a trail mix of pistachios

like butter …

            girls, looking at your phones, so medicine is poison, so the water and the air

and the fruit are poison, what of it,

to-morrow the struggle but to-day the jam, ask yourself:

how should I, only small, go against the heavens,

shoulder burdens, take my finger out of a pie …

            ahhh yes, baby ducks,

between goats, peonies, country road, brand new prius

eight hundred dollar rattan chair there are glottal threads stringing up

the one to the other, I know,

it looks like danger, all the black tape, like a costume, a cold case,

but horror is frivolous, I read that somewhere …

            girls, my gain is not your gain but your loss is my loss,

evil keeps the same pace …

look upon my living room pastoral

look upon my brilliant dress

look upon my shining eye say yes