Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Liam Ferney

Seriously, spree killings are part of the furniture.
Once you get used to it you’ll hardly notice,
besides that new paleo place is. the. bomb.
Don’t mention the free advice you get
from strip mall shonks, just relax into your latest font.
Let the almond milk piccolo do its trick
and don’t mention the licks
the arsenal tallies torqueing free trade.
We are all Fat Men ready to detonate
at the spare promptings of sleeper cells
plotting cancer in a body’s obscure crevasse.

When it’s time to leave:
forget the bill, gild our lies.
Frothy Jetsons swooshing in vacuum tubes till payday.

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Creative Vacancy

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Lachlan Brown

You jump at chancy Snapchat
possibilities, your suitcase eyes

looking better beneath the third
filter. You’re sitting here with

technology’s slouch, sinking
further into the selfworld

imagining a terrifying flightpath
from London to Kuala Lumpur

to anywhere really. ‘Be yourself,
Everyone else is already broken.’

At least that is what you intuit through
this cracked screen, apps scattered

across it like Bondi Beach’s littered
surface on Australia Day, the sky

described as azure by the pen
of the fabulist, by the massive finger

swiping right on more brilliant weather
ahead. So scroll down bright sunshine;

imagine me with wallet hands,
just dispensing money and cheap-grace.

Imagine me as the drunk, punching
his PIN into a macca’s EFTPOS machine

before declaring, ‘Cheeseburgers for all!’
And much later remind me to lawyer-

up when the city finally dissolves
into fine print, books a trial date,

tables itself as solid evidence.
New brief in these days of peril.

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X-Codes, or Katrina Crosses

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Cassandra Atherton
You survive the flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward by taking cover in the bottom quadrant of my heart. Body count zero, I scrawl, to let people know you are safe. I’m your search squad, your protection against natural hazards, your libertarian. Next time the floodwall fails, you’ll be waiting for me to save you from the wall of water. There will be room for you, for the seats pulled from the Louisiana Superdome, for mud-caked teddy bears, and even Fats Domino’s flood-ruined baby grand piano. I collect brokenness in my left atrium. Nature repairs her ravages – but not all.

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Buzz

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Violet Grigoryan

Translated by Shushan Karapetian

To the Immortal Memory of Alfred

He fixed the little fold of the white table cloth, the last glass, – yes,
yes, to the right, no, it hasn’t started, – done, he wiped and set it down
next to the tall shiny towers, – will there be any
leftovers? – buzz!
shoo! – help yourselves, – just what I needed, what fine taste you have,
straight on to the caviar, like Lusok, bread-fellow,
“The woman and the buzzer: during the last supper,” how dramatic, –
no, you are not late, please enter from the right, – but the “last,” – bro, c’mon,
I had just wiped it, – no, I don’t believe: the great one would say, even for coursework
will I still make it? – you have to be convincing…
Finger foods, for small, cutsie mouthsies, white
immaculate toothsies,
the size of one bite,
Roman – ha-ha, there is no drunken elephant, but there will be soon –
arranged with a ruler, squarelets, color by color and one by one,
Lusok cried: if you go, I’ll die,
yeah they’re shooting, but this is it, are these any lesser frontlines?
stand and arrange row after row,
row after row, row after row, they come and they
g(rigi)o?
softly smeared mushroom medley under clumps of cilantro,
little hams slivered to cheese,
pinchlets of asetrina – what was it in Armenian? the blessings of distance learning-
shiny sparkly barbequed chicken on skewers …, – yes?
excuse me, help yourselves, please, yes from the right –
piece-lings of dipshit – will there be any leftovers? …

The other is whirrlling filled glasses in a big tray
with expert acrobatics;
breaking waves (saunterers’ trajectory) of Nina Ricci
Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent
Chanel no 5, Calvin Klein…

–The cream, ha-ha, of society, how newspeak! –
will he come? how long has it been?
five or six months? acting as if I was hurt, – hello, thanks a lot, yes, Thursday, –
so he would know my worth, miss me, call after me,
instead I hear – buzz! – the good news, the little round bomb
ba ba boom! on me …
Thrift, thrift,
thrifty management of feelings,
the funeral baked-meats did coldly furnish
forth the marriage tables, – no, I haven’t presented
a project, well I wasn’t here, you are in, right? – argh, it’s pestering me,
shoo! Sol Partre! – yes, the topic is good, – to the syrup of my lipstick,-
good luck to you, savior of women, – force a smile, – yes, yes,
Thursday, – will he come? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws …

Here’s the ambassador, with a white smile, for the sake of those devoted to
Toh lera unce, freehd om, and puh pah peace …
Puh pah pee peace, yes, of course, yes, for the woman, too,
And for the child, Hector’s scraps,
but you stop becoming narrator in the process,
the only thing that’s coming on to you, shoo! and only on your lipstick: is this,
what are you to do, brains nicht, you didn’t have a husband or a proper home,
stubborn señora –

Oh, eternal feminine wail …

Writerjournalistartistsingerpainterdesigner,
the cream…whoa, what’s this ruckus, oh, ohh! of course,
it’s he himself, his foregone majesty – who can stand it, can you say shoo to this one? –
– the state is also pleased with this program
and participates, like so hand-in-hand, – to the encircling
microphone clutter, a Hugo Boss pistil, for the Gucci, Prada, Polo,
leaf cluster, –
for our nation, defense
is our defenselessness – to the tray, through tight cracks, –
how newspeak! – there is no more white? – submissive, compliant, and with a golden smile:
I’ll bring it right now, – and the waves, – for me too! – and more, more and more …

I’ll fuck your mother eh for our nation …

At night Luso, – this one’s Luso too – will slowly take her shirt off
her tired shoulders and before washing it: to the camera, –
it’s the type of job where one always need to be clean, taken care of, you know? –
she’ll bring it up to her nose, ah, what scents from remote worlds, a green
cape, a sailing-vessel, a star-studded hotel, chalices
full of black caviar, coralalalal, sand … struggle,
struggle klepto …
– Hey, hey, look, it was this one today, there is no more wh-
ite?, – he’ll take his nose out, so that he can turn and look
at the television, to the small, cutsie, mouthpiece,
white, immaculate tooth demonstration, – for our nation
like so, hand in hand, – it was the voice of the scent of the parallel world …

– Here you are with red, – white-lacquered delicate nails, mmhm: “Close up,”
diamond-condensed middle finger and thumb, pinky sticking out, – thanks,
oops, oh no, – idiot, it hasn’t even started; a stain on the table cloth, – excuse me,
it spilled, huh, turned into a Japanese
flag … No worries, – turn it … stur … sturgeon!
I remembered, – turn this way, – Zara, one sec, from the shoulder, and one more
excuse me-thank you, – turn that way, –
you know, Gaudi was wonderful, I fell in love, but it was really hot,
Paris in July, not a single museum, I’ve seen them all,
just sheer relaxation, oh, how I’ve tired from this project, –
of course, you’ll grow tired, ten months of the year
you’re loitering about in Europe, shameless grant-eater,
constantly dilly-dallying with the consul, – the middle of July?
it looks like I may have an invitation to an exhibition, perhaps we’ll see each other,
umm, I don’t know the location of the hotel yet, – screw you! sticky gossiper, – yes,
I’ll tell him of course, kiss and bye bye, – to Hector bye-bye,
bye-bye to Hector, bye-bye until death, – how did he say it? until death
I am on your side … ‘till death do us part, joice and rejoice,
crashing cymbals, the baked meat at the funeral repast,
with the accompanying celebrations of the welcome-baby …

You’re good at creating melodramas,
the whole hoopla is for you; yup, there is nothing else,
what’s Hector to you? or you to Hector
that you may shed a tear for him,
like some slut, measure the bile of your heart with words, wo
r r ds, yuck,
curse like a prostitute, like a house-maid,
tsk-tsk! shame on you shame on you shame on you shame on you sh
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame –
you are hell! you are it for yourself,
red-hot needles, on the lining of your dress,
red polka dots on white
yippie! and again, even sharper and sharper, even deeper …
Alimony for the heart – how legitimate! pah pah pah
puh pee, and no bomb or the like, eece of the granny panties
a hefty badaboom
hit your unrivaled society, alas, your unspoken tongue,
how I loved your Parthian, wimp, wuss …
If there were a way to become Sherlock from sissy Watson’s blah-blah
all of us wouldn’t know spy Onik’s address …

I’m fine, thank you, not yet, hope you will join us, –
force a smile, clink your glass, pht, shoo! damned thing!
good thing I saw it early on, otherwise it would have been
an appetizer with the wine, – this July? no, please …, – how did you
say contra … , – it’s been ages, – good thing he approached me, it was the last notch of
the childish babbling of English, – how are you, dear Gago? – see you, – oh yeah,
contract, – well, I’ve lost weight, I am on a diet,
yes, I’ll eat something, uh huh, Thursday, tell Gayan, –
let me smile open mouthed a bit more to this group, – probably a peach, – will he
come?…

The devil asks the Turk, the Georgian,
did you see Mara’s suntan? Gaudi, he-he, it was sooo hot, ho-ho,
listen, did you see Khcho’s piercing? I liked it a lot,
no way, not him, he has a lover, she’s a new chick, yup, come close so I can tell you,
but she’s not a girl, you’re not deaf, are you? hey girl, don’t tell anyone,
he-he, ha-ha-ha, she’s a virgin, but a boy, – whisper and rustle,
whisper and rustle, whisper and rustle, I am shivering slowly
cold, monotonous,
the raindom washed my formless shadow, I am not you anymore,
I am an owl, squeak-squeak!
did you eat my coconut? how was the taste of my … Oh, thanks, thanks,
where did I leave my lighter? – a rhetorical question
for the supposedly fiery Prometheus…

-We’ve gathered nicely, we can start the revolution …
-Hey man, for once, allow us – when did his majesty
approach? – to breathe
calmly, your revo, I’ll be damned! that
lution will not run away to the forest,
leave it for tomorrow, – amicable laughter, Turk and Georgian,
Zara and Mara, Gago and Khcho, devil and Gaudi, revolt and bolt, whisper and rustle,
ow, my stomach, yes, need to eat,
perhaps a peach, Alfie? perhaps, per
haps, the wine numbed me and the elitescented
waves, ah, I wonder, who pops your
pimples? my revolutionized, – well, the microphone,
will I still make it? they are just prepping it, –
and that one with the big yellow head,
that would always sprout under your right shoulder blade, – hey, did you notice
the blonde midget? the yellow head,
barely under the arm, – oops, am I already speaking out loud
to myself? -but how she’s landed
the sugar daddy, – velvet and fur, violin, piano, –
now do you know why they’re fucking? –
don’t exaggerate, – did I say it out loud again? – ten fingers and a tongue,
she does a good job of paying him back with grateful
fake orgasms, aah aah aah –
I’ll buy it, I’ll buy it, – on his favorite piece of beautiful furniture, –
my bed, do you remember how it snap! and I still haven’t fixed it,
the Bible, a dictionary, of the old East, the new West,
poetry, and so on, well
according to its thickness … Will the velvet lady
pop pimples?

A woman’s bed, full of sorrow…

Perhaps a peach, perhaps, perhaps, per
haps, will you eat a peach for life? or co
still conut? still swell, still fart
in front of the velvet lady? drums with your behind …

Ah, the mournful sobbing of my violin …

Oh, who now massages your feet?
who wipes your forehead with lotion?
holds your face with two palms
pressing your lids with both thumbs, –
take off your glasses, do you see
up close? tell me,
and what do you see? –
important things? with your eye? no way,
oh, if you would play
kitty-kitty –
in the Luxembourg gardens…
But are there Luxembourg gardens in the world?
where does the red flag hit the thorny scarlet rose
beyond words?
where is the bee – that is not seen, but heard, – speaking buzz-ish
in his ear?
and does the wind retain the whizzing of the z during translation?
or does it tatter one by one and each and every z
takes a letter to the fields far from the dandelions…
But are there dandelions? are the fields
on the other side of the hill there? is the sun there? is there a star
and moon? does the water plummet from the river to the ravine?
but is the ravine there
beyond words?
If there is sun, then why do the mornings rise in black darkness?
if there is water, why am I thirsty?
if the bee exists, why did the scarlet-red rose wither in my hand?
if there is the ravine, who is that jumping off
that is not the self? But … heartless girl …

No, don’t lie to me, there is no one, they are not here,
I’ve seen them in a parallel place, in another world,
here there are words that confirm them,
but now they are already bearing false witness,
but now they are already their graves,
but now they already smell like death,
but now already …

How far away is the parallel world from the heart of your heart? …

One, two, parallel, yes, it sounds good, three prizes:
1. best
2. best
annnd, the bes …
annnd, the bes …
my very first, my Turk, my Georgian, my devil, my Gaudi, –
waves of emotion and the stink of sweat
from the corners and cracks of ChanelGucciBoss …
– I wasn’t doing my work for the medal or the prize –
the champagne was mine, that’s for Nvard, she was just here, that green-turquoise over there –
yeah, what did I want to say, may the worthy be appreciated.
–Well, of course, ok, I am going to go eat something, probably
a peach, I am on a diet, say hello to Nvush
if I don’t see her, and breaking the waves,
lacerating, la-cerrrrr-attt-ing …

I broke the waves so you, so I, so
that you could rise up
here today, shit on me – what a causeandeffect
conclusion –
kick me in my stupid ass, throw me on the ground and wipe your feet on me,
just like this line, row after row, like an army of long-legged glasses
men were lined up in front of me, oh, frailty, thy name … what? –
ah these women, love over and over love over and over love …

But of course, I wasn’t doing my project for a medal or a prize,
the important part is to participate, we are all for the same important goal – listen, did you see?
this harlot’s ex-fucker has already come with his wife,
she probably still hasn’t seen them, when I said: it wasn’t for the prize, she smirked,
now go and laugh over there, did you see how she had lost weight? Laurel-Hardy,
probably from active masturbation, he-he, a cigarette
in her expert fingers, always a cigarette, yuck, fake,
cuckoo loony old woman, she’s completely lost it,
she’s already talking to her self, uh huh, enough already, one-two,
one-two, we said it sounds good already, like a fly she meddles in everything, nutty
fucker, say hel-loo to Nuh-vush, someone should ask, does Nvush
even give a shit about you, can I tell you something for real: would you believe it
if I said I don’t even care, whoever it’ll be, as long as it’s not Nvard, with her father’s position
everywhere …

I trampled on my father’s crown, the golden fleece your prize,
I tore my brother to pieces, threw him in the sea,
I abandoned my home, my own shore, I abandoned my homeland in the water,
My pair of children, I …
– You don’t have a child to pop the pimple? –
you are hell, you for yourself, when there is someone else sitting
inside of you –
o virgin kiss-ass daughter of Babylon, blessed is the one,
who will repay you your recompense,
who will treat you the way,
that you have treated others,
blessed is the one, who will take your child from you,
and smash him on the rocks,
Oh, dear Kikos, oh, dear Kikos …

Through the waves through the waves through the waves,
hey, careful, little one, where are you running? where did you come from? what’s your name?
where is your brother?
my mom has your, she has your smell too,
what about this, does she have some of this? –
a prize for the protection of oppressed women, –
oh my prize, my red medal,
on someone else’s chest,
a prize for finding women,
for putting a tongue in their mouth,
and with that same tongue, for mouthing off, – mhm, you were one of the judges, right?
you know, in the villages it’s only darkness,
just like the middle ages,
they beat women, can you believe it? those same wretched ones,
who toil in the fields all day, in dung and, you know? this bullshit,
and in the kitchen, I mean everywhere –
sorry, hey Nvard? they were looking for you, – the men get drunk, go
home and beat those miserable ones, to whom they have not given even
one drop of love, no warmth and no care, what language is that in? with what do they
eat with? – sexual object – that’s it, nothing else,
excuse me, tell me, why are you in a flutter, girl? they still haven’t announced the prize … whaaat,
yes, I saw, I saw,
and that’s the object, he-he, sexual, she’ll see right now, you’ll see how her head
has remained bowed, she can’t take care of her own issues, she is solving other
women’s problems …

Hey, idiot women, hey, Dridorian
ten girlies, down there, for whom have you
painted yourself scarlet red? or should I send you the good news in the mail? for the lot of you snoring in the donkey’s ear, ill –
informed sluts, are you still waiting for that majestic facade, on which
you’ve inflated your egos so? … Now watch how I am
shredding you into pieces,
shredding and discarding,
and needle by needle, under the nailzz, sprrrraying rrrred
on rrrred, on the blood, sprrrrinkling a good dosse of salt, garrrrlic, and pepperrr,
how I am brrringing you to yourrr
kneezzz, on a sharrrp shingle, so faccce to faccce
arrrm in arrrm, waillll like that, I am going to wrrrring poizzon
from your grrrroanz and whisperzz, –
-Mr. President, here is the white, –
and a pearl, for thy heal(th) … oh my,
hey girl, oh my, it/he/she fell …
Perhaps the rope was too thin, girl, perhaps, per
haps –
well it’s ok, nothing was left in it/him/her,
but for the new little one, that is going to be born, perhaps it would be enough –
yes, it’s a good little one, minus the footnotes, over 300 …
No! don’t hit it with the trophy, girl, yuck, how you smashed it …
Oh, eternal feminine buzzing (3 threes) …

cut


Translator’s note:

The reference to T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in the dedication reflects the attempt by Violet Grigoryan to tackle – in a manner modeled by Eliot – the impossible task of rendering the explosive cacophony of inner thought into the physical and tangible poetic medium. The intensity and richness of the work comes from various factors, including the numerous nuanced invocations to Armenian and international works as well as the deliberate interweaving of various registers of Armenian, along with a fluid multilingualism between Armenian, Russian and English. These intra- and inter- literary and linguistic leaps were quite a challenge to convey in a translation, to say the least. Although Grigoryan’s intentional nonconformity to linguistic and literary standards (of all kinds) and preference for constant ambiguity may seem overwhelming at first, they only add texture to the main characters’ battle with their double consciousness and the author’s shared encounter with the limitations of the poetic medium.

Shushan Karapetian

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Distance Theory | Teoría de la distancia

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Valerie Mejer Caso

Translated from the Spanish into the English by Torin Jensen

A body in its passerine excellence looked at me. I didn’t notice right away. It takes time to know what in reality has been passing. And so we’ve written letters, long ones and fun ones, others that confess unmentionable things. And for all we’ve said in them I don’t know your house, you don’t know mine, and you’re several countries away. At least we fit within the illusion that we’re “Latin Americans,” that “we come from immigrants who had wanted to return home.” Anyway, you’re so far away the only time we went to your country we flew over the snow-capped Andes. I had read what you’d said about that mountain range, but it’s true that to see it and be seen by it was something else. So it’s exactly where you understand the price you pay for distance. On a map you’re a horse and I’m a mare, the two of us are the same color, nearly the same size and by a whim of mine we are apparently the size of the country where we we’re born. We’re separated meridians that I’ve painted in blue and white in memory of the sky and the clouds (that you transformed on the page) and if you add up our drawn bodies, if we stretch them out on the map, we would close the distance between our countries (on the map). A verbal measure that exists between wanting and talking and living to want to talk, of seas and nothing, of pasts and of everything. So we’ll speak tomorrow with uncertainty but with a full mouth. Dying daily, drawing and writing nonsense. For the other side of the map measures the still bird, the one I said looked at me. So this theory goes, my infinite friend. It serves as no more than a letter, but it isn’t a letter, it doesn’t negate the distance. It’s nonsense, but it’s the only home where you and I find each other.


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Constellation

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Ella Skilbeck-Porter

… thought is not a sentence at all, but, after several explosions, a fallout in words … Hélène Cixous

… Strolling under a constellation
some moments strike like lightning
spasmodic astral body, gambler’s luck
“toute pensée emit un coup de dés”
ink swirling residual patterns down a sink.

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Sanctuary267

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Anne Elvey

In February 2016, after a High Court ruling against a challenge to the legality of Australia’s practices of arranging for the detention of asylum seekers in offshore facilities, a grass roots campaign mobilised around the slogan #LetThemStay. 267 people, including many children of whom 37 were babies, had been brought to the mainland for medical and related reasons; they were now threatened with return to detention in Nauru. Photographs of the infants appeared on the front page of daily papers in the Fairfax group. A Brisbane hospital, several churches and some State Governments were among those who responded with offers of sanctuary. To date many of the 267, including all the babies, have not been returned to Nauru, but are in community detention in Australia. (Information drawn from Get Up Campaign and a variety of daily news articles.)

At 31 March 2016, there were 468 people (363 men, 55 women, 50 children) in detention in Nauru, and 905 men in detention on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. 1679 people including 17 children were in various levels of detention facility in Australia or Australian Territories, from Christmas Island to Villawood, from Perth to Melbourne. 655 people (184 men, 154 women, 317 children) were in community detention in Australia.


Sanctuary 267

Note: The names listed are not those of asylum seekers per se, but reflect the diversity of persons, any one of us, who might have been in this situation.


Sanctuary 267

Aadya.
Aaron.
Abdallah.
Abdul Rahman.
Abed.
Abraham.

Adam.
Aditi.
Ahmed.
Ai.
Aicha.
Alejandro.

Alexandra.
Ali.
Alice.
Aline.
Alonso.

Althea.
Amahle.

Amar.
Amelia.

Amina.
Aminata.
Anna.
Angelo.

Antonio.
Anya.

Ariel.

Asmita.
Augustine.

Ava.
Avery.
Awa.
Aya.

Aziz.

Bakary.
Bandar.
Bandile.
Barbara.
Beatrice.

Benjamin.
Berat.

Bintou.

Bokamoso.
Bolormaa.
Bruno.
Camilla.
Carlos.

Carmen.
Carolina.
Celine.
Charlotte.
Chih-ming.

Chloe.
Clarence.
Con.

Dalal.
Daniel.

David.
Dejan.
Diego.
Dimitar.

Diya.
Djeneba.
Doha.
Dylan.

Eisha.
Eitan.
Elena.

Elise.

Elizabeth.
Elnur.

Emil.
Emilia.
Emily.
Emma.
Eric.

Esther.
Ethan.
Fahd.
Farah.
Fatiha.

Fatima.

Fatoumata.
Feng.

Fozia.

Frances.
Francesca.
Frank.

Gabriel.
Gamalat.

Gamila.
George.

Giovanna.
Goran.

Guo.
Gustavs.

Habib.
Habiba.

Hai.
Hana.

Hannah.
Hao.
Harper.

Hassan.
Hasti.

Hatice.
Hawa.

Ha-yoon.
Hessa.
Hina.

Hinano.
Hiro.

Hoda.
Hussein.
Hydar.

Ibrahim.
Iminathi.
Indira.
Ion.
Irene.

Isabella.

Isidora.
Islande.

Jack.
Jacob.

James.
Jana.

Jandamurra.
Javier.
Jay.

Jayden.
Jean.

Jennifer.
Jeremiah.

Jesse.

Jessica.
Jie.
Ji-woo.

John.
Joon-seo.

Joo-won.
José.
Joshua.

Julie.
Jun.
Justin.

Kadiatou.
Karabou.

Karim.
Karima.
Kavya.
Khadija.
Khaled.
Khayone.
Kheira.
Kirra.
Klea.
Krishna.

Kungawo.
Kyla.
Leá.

Lejla.
Leon.
Lesedi.
Lethabo.

Liam.
Lili.
Linda.

Logan.
Louise.
Lowitja.
Lucía.
Luis.
Mahmoud.
Malak.

Manua.

Mary.
Maryam.
Marwa.

Mateo.

Max.
Maya.
Mehdi.

Meriem.

Mia.
Molly.
Mona.

Muhammed.
Mustafa.

Myra.
Nada.

Natalia.
Nesreen.
Nicola.

Nishi.
Noah.
Noreen.

Nur.

Odval.
Olive.

Omar.
Omri.

Onni.
Oumou.

Paul.
Peng.
Peter.

Poema.
Prasert.

Ralfs.

Ramón.
Renz.
Reza.

Richard.
Rin.
Ruby.

Ryan.
Sakineh.

Salma.
Sarah.
Sekou.

Selim.
Sinayabonga.
Si-woo.
Sophia.

Souta.
Stefan.

Sunita.
Susan.
Tali.

Tao.
Tareq.

Tehei.
Teiva.
Thomas.

Ting.
Tobias.
Umar.
Valentina.
Valeria.

Vedad.

Vincent.
Victoria.
Virginia.

Wei.
William.
Wiremu.

Xian.
Ximena.
Yael.
Yan.
Yassin.
Ya-ting.

Ye-joon.

Yi.
Ying.
Yong.
Yoon-seo.
Yusuf.
Yuuma.

Zara.

Zeynab.
Zhen.

Zoe.
Zofia.
Zoran.

1.         the shelter of a cloud passing across the sun
2.         stained glass rainbows her child’s face
3.         a tent that does not leak
4.         a mosquito net
5.         a seaworthy life
6.         a father rocks a daughter in time with the sea

7.         a Brisbane hospital
8.         a bowerbird chick in a poet’s home
9.         fresh water
10.        the beginning of an open text
11.        a chorus of human voices
12.        each in counterpoint

13.        the scent of familiar herbs
14.        clean sheets
15.        the sound of rain on the roof at night
16.        room
17.        space for another

18.        an unstitched coastline
19.        she sews a child’s hem with dry hands

20.        adequate employment
21.        a sufficiency of bees

22.        to commit to memory unfamiliar names
23.        of birds
24.        and flora
25.        to be alert to the redback in the garden

26.        the poet laureate of detention
27.        her bags of rice

28.        a sudden calm

29.        a tenancy of appointment
30.        a child’s construction kit

31.        a wedding cake topper snug in a pocket
32.        a woman and a man
33.        two women
34.        two men

35.        a child pours water on a child’s hands

36.        an open gate
37.        a closed gate
38.        a cool house
39.        a warm house
40.        context

41.        her hand samples the sun
42.        air shifts in a sheoak

43.        if community

44.        a possum evades a cat
45.        the milky way
46.        two stars point to a cross
47.        she looks up
48.        an infant nuzzles

49.        an insufficiency of fear
50.        a sufficiency of awe
51.        water spills over stones
52.        a monolith in the desert
53.        the first splash of rain on dry earth

54.        a gaze that dips
55.        respect
56.        quilled language

57.        the evidence of hope
58.        a free thought

59.        a breath
60.        and then another
61.        and then
62.        suddenly a hush of stars

63.        when the axle tightens
64.        a well sprung cart
65.        a linen-filled chest
66.        the rocking the rocking the rocking

67.        green eyes imprinted in memory
68.        every day a breath shared
69.        from your birth to his death

70.        a street beyond the front fence

71.        as if home
72.        as if home

73.        unbending the barbs of a polis
74.        the unpicked knot
75.        of tension
76.        of injury
77.        a story unravelling as you speak

78.        a tapestry of tact
79.        to touch
80.        without rancour
81.        to touch
82.        the nine tails only a museum piece

83.        only only only

84.        a life worth the trespass
85.        an adieu worthy of a future

86.        to approach the asymptote of your want

87.        a stability of climate
88.        if only
89.        if only

90.        she writes her name on a leaf
91.        she shuffles the forms

92.        a bureaucracy of good intention
93.        the strength of a gesture that is mostly true

94.        every impetus toward
95.        hospitality

96.        to be the word’s guest
97.        if a poem could construct a dwelling

98.        stone and wood and a candle in a niche
99.        its flicker and fade

100.       the solidity of a thing
101.       an arm, an embrace, a threshold kept

102.       she wades through stubble
103.       in an open-necked shirt
104.       the dust is stirred by her tread

105.       only the wind’s language
106.       and no need for translation

107.       a resistant symbol or a vacant sign
108.       no vacancy

109.       a handwritten letter
110.       one hundred thousand signatures
111.       a genuflection, a genuflection, a genuflection

112.       the weaving of scraps returned to the limb
113.       of the tree swaying and claws that hold

114.       your name in the mouth of a neighbour
115.       his alien kindness
116.       her shared world

117.       the comfort of culture
118.       its unsettling conservation
119.       its disturbing transformation
120.       its resilient transience
121.       and yours

122.       to name a child for an ancestor

123.       your empathy for a woman moving house
124.       freedom to exercise kindness

125.       the pronunciation of a name
126.       good will

127.       the interval between drops on a roof
128.       her face softening

129.       a head bowed, eyes closed in prayer
130.       your prayer mat on the floor of your home
131.       the hours rung

132.       a solidarity of nannas
133.       knitting

134.       a quilt of lobbyists
135.       clothed for the season

136.       frith

137.       a compassionate peril
138.       dangerous mercies
139.       the limits of the open

140.       a ruling
141.       against an unruly state

142.       a separation of nations
143.       opportunity
144.       parliamentary remorse

145.       she delivers kelp to his door
146.       a garden compost heap
147.       a wilderness of exotic species tended

148.       a white fantasy
149.       renounced

150.       historically a crime admitted
151.       a punishment postponed
152.       a tug of war between church and state
153.       a space of civility
154.       temporarily
155.       an idea in becoming
156.       towards law
157.       a way station in the rule
158.       of monarchs and monks
159.       reckoning contrition

160.       each time she sings
161.       a leaf falls
162.       a latch unhinges

163.       salutation without appointment
164.       the depth of skin
165.       her hair is held in a bird’s beak
166.       the wind takes the grey thread

167.       the vacancy
168.       a suggestion of singularity
169.       the allowance of an embrace

170.       she imagines she kneels
171.       weeping
172.       beside a hospital bed
173.       and on the tiled floor
174.       the sun spills
175.       indifferent in its own way
176.       to the raw and the salve

177.       a failure of imagination — to say this

178.       if a hand opens
179.       if a hand
180.       if a hand and a hand

181.       to have enough to give

182.       the peal of prayer
183.       the peal of prayer
184.       the peal of prayer

185.       to fashion a peace

186.       if you lean against a chimney
187.       if a house is constructed around a hearth
188.       if the fibres of the carpet soften to your steps

189.       the wear of things used well
190.       a banksia of irregular becoming

191.       what it is to be
192.       this life of generosity

193.       she walks home in autumn rain
194.       she dries her shoes in late morning sun
195.       the next day

196.       a future to welcome
197.       a future to submit to
198.       a future to shape

199.       allowing for the impossible

200.       to hear frogs in the wetlands
201.       to see five pelicans cross the sky

202.       she is chasing the cat from the garden
203.       on behalf of possums and birds

204.       to persevere
205.       to dare to speak

206.       to imagine a child
207.       an untamed growing toward
208.       ripening

209.       the wisdom of infancy
210.       to accept solace

211.       hostage

212.       the kindness
213.       that knows the needful invisibility
214.       and the crucial being seen

215.       the space bar and the tab
216.       that mimic
217.       a room of your own

218.       she practices a spare sympathy
219.       a warm drink and time to speak

220.       even the clichés of welcome
221.       written with paint on a sheet
222.       holes cut out for the wind

223.       a march
224.       a chant
225.       a banner
226.       things that fail you

227.       if you were able to visit her
228.       what would she offer you?

229.       this question of capacity
230.       this question of capacity
231.       this question of capacity

232.       if the body
233.       is a temple

234.       sanctum
235.       sanctus
236.       sacrosanct

237.       dignity
238.       a quality of a roman elite
239.       to live for an empire
240.       or its minion
241.       to be free of this

242.       aphesis

243.       quietly in the suburbs
244.       thirty-seven infants in their cots
245.       ninety-one children at play

246.       a word for preservation
247.       of other species
248.       and our own

249.       that gives to silence nothing
250.       that gives to speech nothing
251.       that gives to justice nothing
252.       in excess of hope
253.       the privilege of more
254.       than making do

255.       she is safe enough to be disappointed

256.       a star and a crescent
257.       a cross and a book
258.       an emu flying
259.       a story of bunyips
260.       and deep water
261.       a reviving flood

262.       necessity

263.       her births are accompanied
264.       her bones are buried in good time

265.       what cannot be imagined
266.       other and more than
267.       the thing you came for

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Omniglot

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Julie Maclean

after Mica Still


if these walls could talk
they would say I like pink
& fleshly themes hares with x-rated heads
lobes suspended in amniotic fluid
ears flat back in fear and thrill

a passing prefect or someone on yard duty
might see an outline of us in silhouette
cherry – flipping, a tongue perhaps
meanderings in sharp relief

i give no turquoise clues outside
the toilet cubicle

conducting the occasional tryst
working with my hands
all ways

just you and me entering sacred ghettoes
high on fluoro dreams in your lunchbox
canned ham through cling – film

a vegemite sandwich

wolf lovers kneel at my altar
I howl in pig latin to the sky

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

neodymium

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Jordie Albiston 
Nd— experiments are conducted at the e+e− storage ring VEPP-2M in the energy range 2E=0.5-
1.4 GeV by physicists at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics    Novosibirsk    1982 to 1987
her kids born during that time    Norway's Norsk Data peaks then too with the NORD-5 32-bit
minicomputer which beats the VAX by six years so what!    Nancy-drew-Naughty-dog-New-
democracy-Nuclear-dawn    none of it matters when she becomes mother to angel daughter &
son    she does not yet feel his lanthanide pull    is blind to his laser light    walks past him at
concerts takes the same bus    miss! miss!    they are still "he" & "she" not "us"    25 years until
God forces things    & then Dear Reader the astonishing begins    a nanosnap in a late southern
spring    a beam more powered than the American Dream    o incandescent fate!    "new twin"


          it is a mighty magnet that connects us    we smash into each other like this    it marks
          us for life    a confluence of colours a duality of light an excitement of newfangled
          cells    but love so pure is dangerous & rare & one must take care    intense! intense!
          the kiss so bright the heat so huge it melts you whole before you can say "permanent
          Home" or "popular inversion" or "inertial confinement fusion"    one must take care
          protect from within    be able to say    refugees welcome!    rescue the reef!    respect
          your elders!    rape is wrong!     be able to say I-am-sorry-I-love-you-come-back-come-    
          back for the truth my darling is told like this    in the grim dark future is only cold    
          the soothsayers have spoken    St John Nostradamus George Orwell Jim Jones    it will
          come as we laugh or make love or eat    an Andromeda colliding a World War Three
          electrons finally forcing themselves free    you & me learning the latest buzz speak
          'tribulation'    'revelation'    'Armageddon'    'hell'    with Gog & Magog both clanging
          their bells & asteroids & strangelets raining on world    & Daleks descend & rapture
          upends & the fifth sun blackens & NASA announces "total existence failure of—
Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

this precise rain, this floating world

Posted on November 1, 2016 by John Warwicker

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Phlogiston

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Les Wicks

A nonexistent element. The theory of phlogiston was devised as an explanation as to why some things burned. Materials which had lots of phlogiston were supposed to burn well, releasing the element during combustion. Disproved with the discovery of oxygen.


We need to know why we blaze, when
nothing happens as
life escapes from an aviary of scabs.

We breathe in our canopies. Watch the basket of
wants – our morning beggary,
the mansuetude of respite.

When nobody knows you,
as though pain needs an audience.
Punch the sky, kick the dirt.

Then piss out your small complaints, maybe
beat the wife & kiddies maybe
run down that odd person outside the shopping strip.

Anyone could understand, it’s
an element & they each have
their own course, their need.

Our trees are just dinner,
other life an inconvenience. We eat incandescence
as frantic hands simultaneously paint windows in their fear.

The animal intelligence avoids our sunlight.
Earth serves flammability poorly.
We know so little, in certain conflagration.

There are no apologies in legends
& futures can’t by definition
live in those written towns.

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Time is a river, time is a bridge

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Kim Cheng Boey
Time is a river that passes through you, crossing and recrossing, rippling score of silence under the bridges of your life, and you wonder if it can be the same river or the same person twice, the amber glide of the Arno, the spring light polished in memory, a long scroll of plainsong flowing out of some deep medieval past, and I am back here in middle age, mid-river, the Ponte Vecchio downstream a golden span, a bridge crossed a lifetime ago, sniffing out echoes of that early spring morning when our steps rang out softly on the stone streets on the other side of the river, our first morning in this city that seems to go in search of itself, piazza by piazza, church by church. In the hostel kitchen Ansgar had said, “That is why I come back every year, the beautiful stone alleys and hidden gardens.” Each spring he made his way here from Skagen, after his wife’s death. His words came slow, the Nordic accent laden, as though they were slow steps in heavy snow. After breakfast he led us, shuffling in leather loafers worn as his face, through quiet streets of shuttered windows and arched doors, the stone alleys that gave nothing away, the April light shifting with each turn, brightening the top of the buildings, parleying with the counterpointing shade, foreshortening and then lengthening perspective. Ansgar moved so slow it was as if he wanted us to read the unwritten history of the city, the journal our steps traced on the rivers of worn stone. The old man’s drooping mouth curled in a child’s smile as he ushered us through a gate. To a pause in time. And we sat at the fountain in the cloistered garden, ringed by arched galleries of a convent. Ansgar held out a brown paper bag, the tremor in his hands at breakfast gone, his fingers gnarled, skin thickened from a life trade in carpentry. The cherries sparkled in the chant of light and water, and we ate without a word, on our foreign tongue the dark crimson flesh turning into sweet wine. And the pale blue light in Ansgar’s eyes answered the chords of the Florentine sun, the peace settling on his face like Victor Sjöström’s in Wild Strawberries, the peace that had travelled a long way from home, from the pine forests in the deep north, the hidden fjords of Ansgar’s life, from the past, from its glide into the future, travelling through the seasons to hold this gate in time open.

***

Time is a bridge you cross and recross, the river’s song unchanged in memory’s burnish and in your mind’s reliquary this frayed image of the naked Christ, the pale sheen of its slender carved body suspended in space, calling from the sacristy of lost time, that spring morning when Ansgar led us to the plain Romanesque façade of the Santo Spirito. In the nave we stood, still in the hull of a submarine ark, and felt the press of silence, emptiness contained, and then the distant hum, long deep waves of soundings, till like struck bells, we heard it ring on and on within us, calling us to step across the threshold, through the door in the aisle to the sacristy, the life-size crucifix bathed in the floating panes of light from the apse windows, hung by a thick wire rope. Naked Christ, not even a crown of thorns or a modest loincloth, his long slender arms held up as if in flight, the right foot nailed on top of the other foot, so the knee and hip are canted to the left, in counterpoint to the right tilt of the downcast head, its finely chiselled hippie face and eyes closed in the perfection of death. No hint of resurrection, this quiet death coming to life under the sculpting knife, unpeeled to the mortal light. Such perfection learned from anatomising corpses from the basilica hospital when Michelangelo found refuge here at seventeen. You wonder about the young man he picked to be this serene Christ, the body still garbed in its mortal dress of joy or pain, coiled in pain or taut in lust, not this loose-limbed pinioned repose. We bowed before its beauty, then bought postcards from the basilica shop. For years the dead face was taped to the wall above my study desk, till it vanished in the move to another country, another life from yours. And each Florentine spring Ansgar sent a postcard to you, then silence. Time is a river you recross, ford to the place you have been before, the past coming alive on the other shore. Memory’s guesswork, crossing another bridge, from the Duomo side, my feet feeling these streets without a map, as Ansgar’s did, trusting memory’s route, drifting past the open market, the morning light now warming the tree-lined piazza and the face of the Santo Spirito, streaming through the high windows to find us standing in the sacristy, dipped in the font of silence, as if in the vault of held prayer, before the hanging, waiting body.
Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

September 11, 1973

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Juan Garrido Salgado

That September 11 … exploded there in my country.
Yes. It exploded La Moneda in Santiago which was devoured by flames.
But. There were thousands, hundreds of thousands of tortured bodies,
crushed hands, eyes staring at the gates of death,
bodies tied to pieces of rails of evil and thrown into the deep sea.
That 11 … if Dante had not written the Divine Comedy
& Raul Zurita had not written the Anti-Paradise
still it would happen as happened it.

That September 11 … Neruda shouted: Come and see the blood in the streets
he died, his funeral was prohibited by a military Junta.
That 11 … It had not been in a chapter of Marquez’s book, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
That 11 … 1973 Kissinger and Nixon collapsed our history forever.

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Killing Bill or whatever the hell his name is (‘Battle Without Honor or Humanity’)

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Stuart Barnes

with a line from Yeats


No one expected the second coming
out:

a burst rubber, a premature
BOOM!

‘PEP,’ you echoed. ‘I’ll drive you to
Bolsover

first thing in the
morning.’

His speechlessness a stun
grenade,

ignored
calls

blast
mines.

Hours later, Grindr’s
missiles.

*

Small: the Beef Capital: the bit of
linoleum

on which Bill or whatever the
hell

his name is
fixes

a gaze blank and
pitiless

as the sun in
Coles’s

old-fashioned produce
section.

Your imagined visor blazes
blackly,

like the Bride’s, your Yamaha sets off
yellowly.

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

1967. Bombs Rain Down on Torrey Canyon

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Ross Gibson

Blustery springtime month of March.

Supertanker Number 1.  Commercial Vessel Torrey Canyon.  Titanic proud with bulk unmatched.  Liberian in its livery.

The Captain, bonus-parched and scared of crew, shortcuts through to Northern Wales.

Metallic belly-hull of Torrey Canyon grinds eleven days on Pollard Rocks in 7 Sisters Reef betwixt Lands End and lonesome Scilly Isles.

Torrey Canyon, plump with slopping cargoed oil, is a full gorged tick throbbing megatons of goop.  Megatons.  Of crude.

A viscous slick anoints the oozing gash.  20 miles of stink and dreck outreaching.  From the upwelled unctuous rocks and over to the offshore trench:  a thickness slow and black as recent dread.  Furthermore  …  an extensive, tanged corridor glugs 70 miles northeast&west along the Cornish coast.

(Old men now convince themselves they walked upon the lolling pelt.  Lifeboat to lifeboat and back to shore.  So glutinous, the gunk, they claim, in cold salt Channel water.  ‘No mere thin smeared meniscus, this’).

Too, shoreline Normandy prepares to get some sludge, while Paris lambasts Downing Street, which lisps in diplomatic snoot, ‘It’s the Liberian lowlife, Jacques; nothing’s down to us’. The French say, ‘What? You have no men with force?’  Then Harold Wilson cracks the shits. He summons Royal Naval Buccaneers hangared up in Lossiemouth. (Garrison town smashed by bluff Norwegian Seas assailing northern Scots.) Wilson’s roused to shout, ‘Just fix this fucking UP.’

The Chief of Buccaneers thinks out loud, ‘Let’s bomb the craft and set the oil alight  …  with napalm mercy-dashed by hot-lined Yanks from ‘Nam.’ (It’s 1967, recollect.)  The Yanks respond, ‘This one’s gratis, all on us, so long as you just let us stay and play.’  The Chief of Buccs quips, ‘Acchhh, I love a peacetime bust!’

And together this is what they do. 70,000 pounds of shrieker bombs break up and sink the Torrey Canyon while the sloppy leas of obstinate crude get doused with ‘palm-and-petrol muck.  52,000 gallons disgorged from gyring B52s.  (They see good portent in the numbers.)  Yanks drop a firebomb in this soup and bank their plane in howling climb.  The towering column of particulated flame lights up the dozy town of Tintagel.  100 miles away.  And 500,000 sea-birds cook quick to crisps in ferocious noise while galumphing through the grime.

Up in the plane, they squint and spy the ascendant whoosh of discontinued souls.  Notice next the gleaming ozone breach  – –  first time seen  – –  the Arctic Circle leaking at a scabby dent.

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Exploding Head Manifesto

Posted on November 1, 2016 by A D Harper

0. a television soap opera and someone getting mugged

you know the tropes already: a guy in leather and a bandana and a too clean t-shirt and a bit too pretty and a knife on the screen of your tv set above the dvd player if you still have one next to the flowers next to the mantelpiece the graduation photos and the babies the coffee table with the local paper whereas

1. when I was a teenager I was asleep

and someone fired a gun next to my head

2. You’re having sex (that person you’re really into from the coffee shop) in the forest under a waterfall like an advert for tropical holidays and then a door opens in the waterfall a wooden door and there’s a doorframe and letterbox and a doorbell and a man is there ringing the doorbell and then you wake up and the doorbell is ringing in real life the world is full of men from Porlock

dreams are fussy about tying outer reality in with the narrative and they don’t care so much for logic they’re literalists but they’re anti-Vulcans

3. I opened my eyes and there was no-one there and when I went downstairs where the others were round the kitchen table they claimed to not have heard anything let alone a gunshot so it must have been a “nightmare” but there was no narrative, no dream at all

4. so it was less a nightmare more a gunshot in the night which nobody else heard well you put it down to just one of those things and when it happens again — and again — over the course of the years you put it down to one of those again and again things until you read about Exploding Head Syndrome aka loud noises in your mind when you are falling asleep or just waking up which must be what’s going on with me except it happens when I’m deep asleep and not dreaming

5. on a message board I read about a guy who heard a single bell a mournful condemnatory bell at moments of peak stress but for him it’s when he’s awake

6. I get tinnitus sometimes I’m a water sign I’ve had uber-vivid dreams but not lucid ones I’ve had premonition dreams too I get a bit itchy when people describe themselves as sceptics but it’s just code for being on one team, not being stuck genuinely in the middle, which is Fortean I guess, I guess I’m a Fortean. The problem with Exploding Head Syndrome is nobody really knows what causes it so I’m just throwing out things which might be relevant to a researcher one day and they’ll find this on a Google search and something I say might solve the puzzle once and for all the only bone I’ve broken so far was in my toe when I accidentally ran into a door when you accidentally run into a door people tend to talk to you in a gentle voice and they write to your psychiatrist or they did in my case

7. I was mugged for real three hours ago in real life shit I was so scared — that’s what a vivid dream is like filed away in your consciousness as actuality rather than safely stored as just a dream which on waking becomes distanced like watching a television soap opera and someone getting mugged

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Rat Chow

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Chris Edwards

Reconstituted from selected chunks of John Ashbery’s Flow Chart

“… the top
of the volcano has been successfully glued back on, and who is to say we
aren’t invited?” — Flow Chart, p. 167

1.
The incubus awoke from a long, refreshing sleep.
I suppose it does congeal slowly. And the river
threaded its way as best it could, neither conscious
nor uncaring, awash with sentiments in which
the Almighty once saw Himself,
and wept.
Quick—the medication.
And while the fire-mind tries out its images on us
at some charm school in hell, and we can’t avoid
our reflection in these, come speak with me behind
the screen. I’ve been at this stand for years,
a thread of breath: that’s all
almost magical now, almost beyond belief. Just so,
some argue, nothing further remains to be done except
the higher echelons where the view is distant.
Not that I think for a moment …

2.
Here a man carries bags, I ask you. Ask, rather, why the clock
slows down. Smell it yourself he said my gosh. A dream from nowhere
mumbling the litany, unaware that the parallel daintiness
of the lives of the rich mentioned in the Bible
worked, like fish in an ocean
whose bottom is dotted. Now both of us were attracted.
Tomorrow beckoned, and today would soon be then.
Hours,
years later, we were divided up among several participants,
and all that mythology of broken tracks, who make up
the electorate? Each day the ball was in its court. “You’re a grown
man now, but must sit in a tub, on a comfortable income and a few
puddles of camel-stale, jotting down seemingly unrelated
random characteristics.” Leave me here,
if that’s going to help. Always on the rim of some fleshpot,
if he is willing to exchange me for a hostage.

3.
In the real world
one is always setting out from, having in the meantime forgotten
this battle of stupid titans, things keep arriving from the florist’s.
“And I in greater depths than he,” I suppose, know enough
not to insist, to keep sifting a mountain of detritus
like a shuttle. Something else, it says here,
will break fruitfully into oblivion. Another time I was just sitting,
universally misconstrued
in one’s lap, like a sandwich.
The ads didn’t tell you this. You see it is part of your plan,
to realise that sex has very little to do with any of it,
what’s coming, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to like it.
I am prepared now for the drone that submerges
and always turns out to be rather nice.
We must be patient if we are to live that far, deposited
over there, not out of sight.

4.
I wanted to cry back at her: “Yes!
I feel their aura, Mother,
it shall fall into our hands and seem what
disingenuous? Maybe
only a small, other way of living
as one. And when a shining thing approaches,
symmetry is death. Try sleeping on it. And then
we’d have a nice lumbering, tumbrel-like
progress across edifices.
Any day now you must
start something in the sky. And we’re supposed to get on
with the logic these lines always left space for,
the grotty little amusement park one is
horrified at the prospect
of being immured in: mud and cosmetics.
Different forms of address. This stable or retiring room
or whatever you want to call it. You can feel it when the lake is up:
he’s ready to talk business. Yet one’s ego, for a time at least,
must be drugged or convinced with seabirds’ feathers,
and a smart-looking interior. Meanwhile I have
received your postcard. It likes me the way I am,
baling others of us together like straw, for the speed
of light is far away, and whatever is not glue
may be pressed into service as such.”
A kettle boiled happily.

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Legitimate Fragment

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Jarad Bruinstroop

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Magenta

Posted on November 1, 2016 by John Wilkinson

Every single one of the rest had been violated.
We pressed ourselves against hide,
we pressed ourselves onto a yak wool throw.
I saw my ice capsule

float in the drained blue way above
and there was nothing for it.
Outside gravel chippings being swept
along a gouged track,
tar for subsumption
moiled in boilers
curtained in tar,
overflowed,
outside overflowed, hardening at the fringes
yellow sky seeped into, canopied
and hardened.
All or nothing, that was the sum,
steps faltered even though
isolated stars signal to be tacked up –
though underpinned by webs of
projections, as you were,
fall back, that’s your lot, surely is.
O split stopper always were my fallback,
all or nothing,
O split blind trunk fall back,
only to be cancelled or electromagnetic
pulse corrugating time dismantles sunders
pulse. Noli me tangere.
Just remove that mark
in a twinkling/ in a flash/
fields of power will be unconscionable
shrivelled tremor.
Every syllable has been marked
one and by one/
seeded with a confident up-yours
despotic idiom spills over.
Fall back to blockage.
Beyond the tufted field meteorites shower.
On the field rabbit shit.
Inside our tent air thickens now we huddle.
Our escape capsules long departed.
Geospatial analysts have their fix on us.

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High Tide

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Stuart Cooke

tide memory trains
down
the beach the sea chops
& eats itself
rocks doze
in purple sets of allthepossible
opens

the path back home’s washed over

the arabesques cooling
into space
on another turn it’s smooth as linen
a bed for the pelican a tomb
for each dream skewered
on the palms
their reptilian thrash

until the waves
go pelagic, growls
spliced with lanterns
from blackestdeep will they
find those naked feet
seduce their nerves the future

rests on the hairs of my neck
frizzing like dune
tuft
inept balloon
mountainous
earth what speaks is what moves
form
& cry
shy from a sloshing
the literature in flakes
& it emerges
frothed
gill of whose

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6-word stories (50 of them)

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Ouyang Yu

1. BBQ: Zero separation, bed being the body.
2. Title, to Come: Music, alive, a fruit of fingers.
3. Each and Every Morning, Electronic Cleansing: Click. Click. Click. No emails coming.
4. Eight for Six, Reduction: No agitation. Peace and quiet, please.
5. Mulberry Fields Now: People mountain. People sea. Haze, too.
6. They are Here to Clean It Up Again: Man plays sex during brain surgery.
7. A Ship is Singing in the Air: Publish him when dead, for free.
8. 6-word Stories Ought to Have Titles: Thinking someone else’s thoughts: mind surfing.
9. Happiness: To be unemployed, to be Australian.
10. That Chink Poet, Possibly: In 200 years, but not now.
11. Excerpt from a Foreword to a New Book in His Ancestral Land: Australia now home;
China: a non-home.
12. Missing You: Old rain. New arrival. A heartthrob.
13. History: Terribly wrong, something went terribly right.
14. A Cosmetic Future: Sky, injected with botox. Looking better.
15. Development a Hard Reason: Everything’s bigger in a haze, China-made.
16. A Secret Shared is: Freedom: a bullet force-bought to kill.
17. Always Excuses: US-made mistakes: innocents killed en masse.
18. A PhD Proposal: History of anger: Herstory of d/anger.
19. White and Fleshy: T. Te. Tea. Tear. Teary. T/ear/y.
20. Postmodern Ways: Love you so: credit cards please!
21. Futures: Heaven: a vast balance sheet. Missing.
22. Posthumously Published: Cigarette-butts, joined with a writer butt.
23. Post-disappearance Theory: An MH370 love, still to surface.
24. Mind to Map: Theories of deconstruction, and of destruction.
25. The Limit: Beyond sky. Beyond yuniverse. Beyond beyond.
26. According to a 90-year Old: Recipe 4 longevity: Eat less than thought.
27. Rain is a Birdless Affair: Dream in company; vacated by Dreamer.
28. Time to Depart to a Parallel Planet: Poetry is nothing but rubbish, transformed.
29. Once Were Lotus Feet: Shanghigh-heels. Shanghai eels. Hanging separately. De-sexed.
30. Art as Death: Boundary-crossed, living the death, as animals.
31. ‘His aim was dark to her.’
32. ‘We speak English in this country!’
33. Not lonely wolf; lonely orchid, thought-wise.
34. Serial monogamist; serial lovist; serial thinker.
35. Victorian middle-class, Australian middle-class. Little difference.
36. ‘The only retreat was her bedroom.’
37. People do and the skies watch.
38. Warning to men: she withdraws love.
39. The sky-mirror: reflecting a human haze.
40. Men-editors in China: Sex for publication.
41. National Teachers Day for national indifference.
42. Officials? No. A poet hates it.
43. Love: how much does it weigh?
44. In the eyes of Japan: Nanjing.
45. China of fake blondes: like West.
46. A restaurant toilet, of shat food.
47. Get to the truth. Say little.
48. Books translate into 书, that’s 输.
49. Like West, like China, vice versa.
50. Magazines of bullet holes. Word bullets.

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The Doomsday Song

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Christian Bök

(FOR FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE — UPON THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN)

[PLAY ME]
[audio:https://cordite.org.au/audio/the-doomsday-song-bok.mp3|titles= The Doomsday Song] (0:55)


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Song not for you

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Andy Jackson

after ‘Das Lied des Zwerges’ (The song of the dwarf), Rainer Maria Rilke


Crooked blood, stunted hands, cripple,
out of place – uncanny how small
thoughts can be, while I’m incomparable,
only a dwarf because the so-called average
person is taller. You ought
to just walk on by, but don’t. Ever thought
how inflated you must look from this

height? When I walk or shop, I’m inspiring,
it seems. Fantastic to see you getting
out, you say, imagining waking
up in my body, the courage
you’d need not to kill yourself, stat.
How do you do live with that?
That’s me wondering back,
distractedly eating (wow!) a sandwich.

In my home, I’ve made it so I come
face to face with the cupboards and oven, belonging
as we all want it. I sleep in my bed (some-
times alone). At work, my cubicle’s longer
and wider than yours. True,
this isn’t much of a song –
but then it never was meant for you.

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from sonnet(s)

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Daniel John Pilkington

desire
rose
by
memory
contracted
with
a
sweet
thou
the
content
in
this
grave

called
so
those
poor
pictures
flow
our
bones
desperate
with
charms
and
past
death

rich
thriving
and
a
heaven
told
some
take
birth
accordingly
and
mirth
of
suit

consider
days
to
soul
serve
returning
light
patience
that
man’s
yoke
is
without
wait

thou
the
radiant
and
the
curtains
that
let
silence
wash
the
glares
of
influence

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