prison, must think in bronze

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Hyacinth Meredith

prison to the Court
prison is a tragedy
prison as of one
prison makes a man
prison for nearly two
prison with bitterness in
prison, R- will be
prison. I will not
prison is the best
prison some people advised
prison at all. I
prison about with them
prison I longed to
prison. After a time
prison I need not
prison, must think in bronze
prison life with its
prison, outcasts, those who
prisons, for the lowly
prison fare. It is
prison to understand it
prison. There is something
prison: the first, the
prison through man and
prison along with us
prison style is absolutely
prison walls and are
prison tears are a
prison on which one
prison both the laburnum
prison for two years

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James Faulkner’s Disintegraton Machine

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Nick Whittock

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
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direct translation 1 – Weltraum (Outerspace)

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Holly Friedlander Liddicoat

o


o



r

m



R O


w
d o
l r


M O


d w


o

r

l

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Futile Poem #157

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Alexia Derbas

The salty ocean sprays their skin with mild threats, penetrating
heart & lungs in small doses. Blood-orange safety devices wind
around bodies, squeeze & hug ears with the er-er squeak of
rubber. The deep blue is tender & considerate, for a while. It
does not stir, it does not shed its skin. Until Secure our borders!
Go back! Go back! is carried by the wind. It breathes out in deep
murmurs, gasping, the words turn to mumbles & the translation
is lost on the buoyant euphemisms. The land dwellers project
towards illegal maritime arrivals from homes of wood, brick,
fibrous cement sheets & concretes with feet shoulder-width apart,
hands cupped around mouths as loudspeakers or employ the
correct process, get in line! Meet our requests! Papers! Papers,
made of Ancestor Spirits. From the boat emanates hope. They play
& pray up to five times each day. New land not yet visible. Only
imagined. Imagined in terms of home. New land can’t yet hear
their plastic squeals of determination, or their angry bellies. Dark
water whispers quiet warnings, gentle signals of its instability. Its
ability to swallow them whole. Somehow it’s comforting, you & I
can’t understand how it comforts them. Let it go. Suppose there are
traces of God & the entirety of time in every droplet, traces of life
mingling with the struggle. They know struggle, but violence or
silence – they wait to find out which is worse. & which would you
prefer? So we will decide who comes to this country, the liquid mass
awakes, quickly establishing a hopeless amalgam of: one leaky boat,
too many people & not enough life jackets & the circumstances in
which they come! (& die?) The rainbow develops it’s red round of
applause it is fully enveloped by red.

The Indian Ocean saturates & fills up
bodies while the hum of cheer echoes
through the slippery seas. Silver gulls
circle the skies, dipping down to the
scaly skin for food. They squawk out
of time with the beat of celebration.

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Vowellings in Reverso

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Lucy Wilks

(After Christian Bök, Eunoia)

I Unruly


Unsunk, thus Pru’s lush cult spurns humdrum hurt,

stuffs stubs, bluffs snubs, shuns slurs, gruff flubdub’s churls;

usurps glut’s smut, hunts stunt, clumps mugwump curt,

Pru’s unsung trump plumbs crux, unfurls, uncurls.

Must skulk dull numskull, humbug blunt us, lurch?

Such upthrusts blur, crunch surplus mulch’s grub;

much snuff numbs hubbub, guru’s sunburst church,

but luck Pru sups, mulls dux scuds’ tut tuts drub.

Pru pulls up Lulu, buds plump cumulus,

sulks tumult’s flux, mump’s grump tugs unjust fluff;

stuns bulrush murk, tufts flurry’s susurrus,

plucks dumb cluck truth, nuns’ hushful murmurs buff.

Hug Pru’s plus Lulu’s humbly put up chums,

burnt spun, hung rubdub, glubglub’s turn succumbs.


II Ombrology


Rococo hobos slowly morph to throngs,

how glowworms hobnob on Thor’s ghostly moor;

whom logbook crowns no bloodshot cockcrow wrongs,

for mojo flown yon horn stops short of poor.

Don’t croon too soon from topknot brow O cowl,

for voodoo throb shocks chronos’s droll cost;

consorts moon’s womb forlornly born of owl,

from folly forth fool’s gold forgot who lost.

So lollop on sod’s ivory of tomb,

concoct of protocol orb’s chord sworn low;

go bow to honky-tonk of dodo’s groom,

prolong odzooks for God of sooth to know.

Who swoon contort words’ pomp for rondo trod,

for vow to logos workshops Orloff’s nod.


III Invitingly


With inkling Isis sits, its distich blinks,

inclining childish limbs inditing lips;

which nib will bring its lisping, rhyming inks,

which flight inscribing spiritism quips?

Nigh wist is Isis mimicking its lilt,

it isn’t nihilism wings its fin;

in kinnikinnick’s winking, gliding’s spilt

its whitish iris sidling pippin’s skin.

Inciting ibis, Isis thrills its kind,

with rigid timing fixing stripling’s gift;

its ritzy zip implicit, high in mind,

distills in pidgin titbits prismic lift.

If I print whirring lights with sigil’s skill

will kinship disinhibit, vigil fill?


IV Elegy


Wherever breves secrete themselves we feel

her freshest berth, the deference they entrench

her deft détente excelled. Bejewelled she’ll wheel

the fevered tempest, then eject, bedrench

the vertex, fête these sleepless fetters. Eve

when new we seethed, perfected essences

then erred erectly. Left esteemed hence we’ve

defected, let the seventh scent deem there’s

emergent meekness checked. The whelm her verse

prefers we deepen, steer her cheek where delves

her egress (egrets there her helmsmen terse

spell shelter’s vestment). Then in wrested twelves

we wreck regret, her vessels’ cerements

we fetch, we ferret felt her flesh frequents.


V Arcady


A stanza calms an angst, as avatars

array a Hannah and an Adam, apt

a tract that vamps a sabbath’s plagal stars.

A bard can tra la la, can hazard rapt

as Mars, attack a badland’s flats as all

phantasmal lamps allay a rash, aghast

athwart a flank that chasms gnaw, a thrall

a carnal mantra. Hannah claps as fast

as Adam, drafts a charm that ably warms

a galaxy’s cabbala, pants and paws

a bacchanal. As vast as scandal’s swarms

a spasm spawns a craft, a jackdaw thaws

at craw, and natally amalgam’s play

attracts a sad alas, a psalm astray.

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Split

Posted on November 1, 2014 by S J Fowler

You must treat the days respectfully
Emerson

{for Damir & Maja}

& it is I with Ernst Cassirer & I in the sands
drawing bow across fish sweats
& it is I’s month it is Shark month
the mouth of which is painted upon a van
just down the Marjan from the painted
black hand of the monster shop in Split
large in power least in size
nature showing herself best in leasts
lifting the curtain from the common
& showing us gestating in groups of shouting
old men playing a big book as a big evil & everything
written down is lest we forget it

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autolytic

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Marty Hiatt

beyond the ouroboros
all the roads are parallel
we lean out of windows at speed for love
im not clever with the copula
im a slumpy fuck feigning in the fen
(worlds swallow worlds)
they suggest a new facemask. wot thraldom.

moth falls from lampshade like satan
they are of the sun
theyll not let you sleep
brain of steel, claw brain of alloy
all that youve striven to put out of mind
however belongs in here
this is not the end
but merely the end of disc one.
maybe we should try something else




maybe we should try something else
something else, claw brain of steel
something else

youve got dirt on your head!

disc one belongs in here
out of mind but in alloy brain
leaning in to an all-new facemask
something else, beyond the slump
the window the roads the fen the sun
worlds parallel for love
swallow sleep and fuck at speed
let the lampshade fall

disc one, the ouroboros, here in the merely clever mind
something else
(on repeat)

this is not the end
maybe we should try thraldom




maybe we should try thraldom
thraldom belongs in here!

all the masks are parallel
beyond the roads theyre feigning something else
that youve striven to repeat at speed
they suggest youre put out by disc one
the sun of steel that will not let you sleep
this must be borne in mind

but the face falls from satan
the face swallows moths and dirt
(wot else should we try in the fen?)
we like to claw and fuck the brain with the copula
for love maybe. not clever.
ive got a lampshade on my head
i lean out of windows and try on new worlds, however
this is not the end




this is not the end
i have a similar problem!
maybe we should try sleep
on the clever wings of moths
borne over the fen of worlds and brain
youve striven to get out of there like satan
but lampshades will not put out the sun
the ouroboros merely slumps into the dirt
something else belongs in here, something
with alloy claws and steel windows
you swallow the copula

a new facemask suggests love beyond the roads of thraldom.

in the end
disc one repeats
(the problem)




maybe the copula is the problem!
its claws are a thraldom similar
to the mind of clever satan
or the dirty fen of wingless sleep
the brain is really something else
it swallows suns and windows on repeat
i suggest you mask it with a steel head and face
you merely lean into your alloy feigning, however,
and speeding moths slump into the must

the ouroboros has striven to put love in us
strange echoes inundate the valley
new roads end up falling out of the parallel world

the end is not the problem, you clever fuck
its the beyond.
and




and beyond the problem is the maybe of the speeding here
beyond the end is the merely however
the ouroboros must echo the worlds problems
in parallel with all the suggestions on disc one
but the problem however is the merely similar echoes
of the speeding roads that repeat the swallowing of the ouroboros

youve striven to belong to speed
something else echoes in your steel brain, your alloy mind
satanic echoes of the sun in the valley of your sleep
(dirt must be a similar problem, for windows not moths)
they all suggest you lean into the parallel polyalloy falls
for a new facemask. put it on your head
and belong. what clever feigning

maybe we should put the problem of beyond in here,
maybe try to let head face mind brain repeat thraldom
borne on to the slumpy ouroboros beyond the copula, beyond the end




wheres my envoi?
hey you, ur-tater, make me an earth!
i wanna see how you do it so i can copy
avaunt, you sooterkin!
expectorate yourself!
DA CAPO! DA CAPO!
from the top!

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Tracks

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Rose Hunter

but we didn’t have more time but
we were there then but you said

it’s no good we needed more time
on the 76 on the 200 grilling me as to

questions who am i and if i don’t know
that is all wrong; what i know we best

talk about something else, you
were in a rush but your driving didn’t

reflect it. also we wore seat belts.
in a mental rush, then, to get back

look at that apartment and wanting
me to go with, why not relax

do that tomorrow, this attitude: ten
things fall out of your line, for starters

san blas aticama playa los cocos santa
cruz platanitos steaming (driving cautiously

and wearing seat belts); zacualpan
las varas i couldn’t understand it

why you wanted my input, our present
apartments as well as the contents

of our heads resembled each other
in no way, you were a colony type

and wanted to weigh or be weighing
weighed down often, true (although)

i’d seen you catch fish after fish
and keep on swimming; black footed

disapproval but not upstairs at the english
where you told a story, the mother, the border

the beaver coat; i was in stitches
and you too laughed with your whole face

and light on your face, watering in the light
you see how all these things are?

how you cried like the arctic wind
first thing loss and loss and loss

i couldn’t stay, or for long enough
bucerías; across from the decameron

i faced the ocean and half a white wall
palm with belly girth and window

in that moment i did not care about you
you had never once asked how i was

what, flightless bird! where could
we have gone swimming in san blas

there were crocodiles so many of them
in my dreams i see their wheeling tracks

in the sand what they leave behind

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‘All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.’

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Jill Jones

You’re diagnosed with an incurable illness. You meet someone at a support group. They teach you how to tango. You both undergo a miracle cure. They become a vampire. Your tests come back clear. You delete their photograph.

You change jobs. You and a colleague start off hating each other, but you get stuck together in a lift for hours and sort it out. You play a card game with them one dark and stormy night. A raven begins tapping at the window. You go on a driving holiday together and break down on a deserted outback road. They get kidnapped by a serial killer. You delete their photograph.

You go to your school reunion. You bump into someone you’ve had a crush on since you were fifteen, and admit it in a drunken outburst. They tell you they suffer from amnesia after having a terrible car accident. You delete their photograph.

You are set up on a blind date by a mutual friend. You spill your drink on them at a nightclub and end up kissing them in a back alley. They teach you how to swim. You go to yoga classes together. You get drunk and, in a text message, confess to something you didn’t do. They become possessed by a demon. You delete their photograph.

After a hard day at work, you receive a text from an unknown number. You respond and are thrown back in time to the Jurassic Period, alongside everyone who was with you in the street that night. One of them is someone you’ve had a crush on since university. You set up camp and fight over food. They decide to go hunting dinosaurs. You wait for their return. You delete their photograph with the remaining charge on your phone.

You are suddenly thrown forward into the Holocene, into your own time period again. After a hard day at work, you find someone’s wallet. You receive a text from a random number. It says: ‘You are possessed by a demon’. You delete the message and go shopping.

You’re diagnosed with another incurable illness. You become a vampire and acknowledge it in an angry outburst. You meet someone at a support group. It is a dark and stormy night. You wake up and it isn’t a dream. The birds begin acting strangely. You delete your photograph.

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homology

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Anupama Pilbrow

land rewrites itself, isn’t it
isn’t it
repastured
reconstituted: 2% fat homologized

[place a place content fat the milk
changes nation a nation
viscosity takes precedence
to pour the milk from jug a jug
someone has to redesign the curvature the spout
cream jug milk jug
to correct for nation specific pour
prevent drips spillages
group by absence &
money-making potential]

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Working in the Summering Senior Partner’s Office

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Lucas Smith

Working in the summering senior partner’s office
on Pennsylvania Avenue
reminds me of the inferior debts of kitsch,
those sand-storm debts of Timbuktu
and the pickled herring jar where we matured that wish.

You don’t pay for saunas in DC in July,
or coffee if you’re a guest
I am reminded of the gratitude I must try
to show the founders, their parents
my parents, the schools, police, all in terms of why

Wherever he is, the summering senior partner,
there’s hills more sand than grass
judging by his photos he pays for saunas there
then dresses cheaply for his class,
while fish swim past his fishy-food he tramples beche-de-mer

will he know I was in this cell, working while he summered?
It’s true he slaves harder at
the desk than half of congress, not a single word
escapes him, unlike the judge of brats,
or the man who laid his pen down to get hammered.

Back at the summering senior partner’s office
on Pennsylvania Avenue
thinking on these inferior debts of artifice.
The random thefts I owe to you
the man who owns this office so I can have all this.

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madam, i’m adam: noah’s nose knows no gnosis: physis machine: …

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Justin Clemens

madam, i’m adam: noah’s nose knows no gnosis: physis machine: i, cassandra: romano umano: ++: (black out): ares & aphrodite: renaissance: cc: evo-revo: wah wah wah: clones, drones, loans & moans: the drowned world


Trace nit up yap at start,
            angst, ablative. Oh, palp up! Not Adam n Eve. Shame. He mad. Nude. He made rag as garb. Eviction now, eh?! Paradise Lost is brood, breed. Non, Abel, do not murder! Start reversed, I as rêve.
            Civil war, lead ax, ammo tall, a ton. Shat actor live on dewy milk, cast a butt aft, open on a void evolver hose. It raps, sips. Sim I, ode ruse. Zoom saps new ruin. Fie Sir, pug nod, guts know. Tender tug broke EP spool. Park rims swallow anus. Emo R&D, I lap a poopsi. Bog bursting as bags, exasperating as Paliperidone. I spat pit? No, ‘tis an array to revile id. Pee boom at nadir warms butt, oh!
            Top tiff — I spit on loot, a nab insatiable.
            Tram-rats’ tat-inditing Napoleon wept as live grubs died amidst rides. Ah, pap! Nose snuff saw, eh? Die ma semes putrid. So read piss atop a rot nip pit.
            God spat in a cad till its wall lit up.
            Martyr track cast octopod wall, lay as odd as ossature in Eden as a trap-door snaps nips ages apart. Egalitarian anabasis spills Estaban loot on buttock. Culpable on a nab, no six-pack cock can keep mutation turning. Ah!
            Hone dead bastard tell. I ok risk. Call aid’em timer DIAS now. Spot saw red rum. Fi, sac rot, narrative room ahoy!
            9691 bat see cares,
            REM miracles ram revolt rare.
            Sate caffé on exhausted arm. Set a tip: LA? Peru? Tan on tit. A is a rue. Pale Mal, Fat Sam say rots level at last. Oh!
            Madam Armagnac, tapping ass hoe, no smirk, cul top, leer dell, I who middle hold. Lots to crap on.
            Strafe strait. Rap as loot.
Note sluggard nepotism arc, scraping raw God’s sum.
El go to of/for ETA: eat, meet, saw, die. It was.
I won’t sin. Omen: Myra, us. Soy sore so. He dud.
Pure pussied urn at tip. Pulse it live, meet, see big wang grow obstinate flap.
Spivs report radical iota. To hommage tons draw a bon-bon. Eton on hose. It tit trips, eh? Tote pip. Suppose I ram Mam? Cite, die!
Erythema, I burn, aware of dark cankers’ bulbs’ nips.
            Slink cop, erotic as wall ain’t, rat as dwelling awl. Eek!
            Luna mod sac. Combinatorial spaces.
            Ah prefer not to     [TRON’S RAT AVATAR SNORT: LEAR’S I, ISRAEL]
                        n-refer phase caps
Liar! O ta, nib. Moccas do Ma. Nul keel wag nil, lewd sat.
Art nail, law sac. I tore pock Nils: spins, blubs, re. knack rad Foer.
            A wan rub I am, eh Tyre?
Eidetic mammaries op. Pus. Pipe to the spirt titties oh no tone. Nob-nob awards not, e.g., ammo-hot.
A toil acid art roper’s VIP’s pal
Gnaw, gibe, esteem evil tie. Slup. Pit tan rude is super-up dude!
            Hose rosy ossuary mnemonist now.
            I saw tie. Id was teem. Ta, eater of foot, ogle.
Muss dog, warg nip, arcs cram, sit open, drag guls.
Eton tools apart, I arts e-farts.
No par, cots told. Lo, held dim, oh willed reel!
Potluck rims one. Ohs! Sag, nip, pat. Can gam ram a dam?
Hot salt as level, story as mast aflame.
Lap Eurasia, tit no nature palpitates.
            Made Tau, ah Xeno? Efface taser art lover.
            Mar Sel car immerse race, estab. 1969.
            Yo, ha, moo! Rev it, arrant orc, as if murder was tops!
            Won said remit, medial lacks irk. Oil let drats ab da Eden, oh, Hag nin-rut. No it. A tum, pee, knack cock!
            Cap Xi, son, ban a Noel. Ba, pluck cot, tub, no tool. Na, bats! ESL lips. Sis, a banana! I Ra till age trap a SEGA. Gas pin spans rood part. A sane denier, UTAS, so sad.
            Do say all law do pot.
            Cot sack car, try tram. Put ill law.
            Still it, Da, can I taps? Dog tip pint or a pot as sip Da eros. Dirt up seme, same ID. He was Fun’s e-son. Pa phase dirts Di, made Idsburg evil, sat pew Noel.
O, pang! Nitid nit at star mart. Elba it as nibana. Tool no tips if fit pot hot-tub smarm ridant at moo.                         Beep!
Die live, rot Yarra! Na, sit on tip taps, i.e., no dire πi lap. Sag nit. A rep’s axes gab. Sag nits, rub gob.
            Is poop a palindrome? Sun AWOL, laws smirk, rap loops. Peek: orb gut, red net.
            Wonks tug dong up rise if wet wen spasm oozes uredo — I miss piss parties, oh!
            Rev loved I ova none. Pot fat, tub at sack limy. Wed no evil, rot cat. Ah. Snot all atom, max a deal. Raw li vice-versa, Ides revert rats’ red rum to nod. Lebanon Deer. B, door B, sit sole Sid. A rap. He won no it. Cive brags: a gare, dame. He dun, Dame hem. Ah, seven! Mad Aton. Pup lap hoe, vital bats, gnat, rats.
Ta.

                                                                                                Pay, Put in E-Cart.

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Something wonderful has happened it is called you

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Emily Critchley

and mostly these days I just like to look
at you and sometimes make words
out of your name or rock you
in my arms till the thought of I
with or without poetry
no longer matters.
It’s not like I have forgotten
how to worry
about disappearing forests, landfill or the ozone layer
I pray that when you grow up there may still be
polar bears, for instance, forests and an ozone layer
keep the sun off yr precious face
and not just in the zoo
I worry about other things too, but mostly
it is hard to be unhappy these days especially
now the spring’s advancing and you’re learning
about hands – how to hold things in them
and take everything it’s yours

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Chinese Silence No. 80

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Timothy Yu

I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women. –David Gilmour

I can’t really give you the tour. I’ve just moved, it’s a mess, and I just got out of bed, and the books here, well, they’re so sophisticated you probably wouldn’t understand them, and …

Okay, I’ll be honest. It’s because you’re Chinese.

I don’t have anything against Chinese people. I just don’t love them. When I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese.

Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren’t any Chinese people in the course. I say I don’t love Chinese enough to teach them, if you want Chinese go down the street to Lee’s Garden.

Chekhov, of course, was not Chinese. He had a loud Western laugh, so they would never let him into a Chinese restaurant. Everyone who ever met Chekhov somehow became a little less Chinese.

I’m a natural teacher. What I teach is guys, real guy-guys. Heterosexual, not Chinese.

I read this book about China once. There were men with long fingernails stroking tiny bound feet. I know the difference between pornography and great literature. All my favorite parts are underlined.

I teach only the best. What happens with great literature is that the Chinese in the shadows keep moving around. Stop that. What’s intolerable is Chinese who give up all their secrets, like Fu Manchu. I’ve watched him a hundred times and there’s nothing new in him.

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amble

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Joanne Burns

travel in the paganini
canoe and you’ll never become
punctual feed that sort of salad
to your favorite shark and it will
be pissing beetroot, and set off
an alarm i finally located
your power of attorney doc [so
unreadable even bookworms had
only nibbled at the edges] in
the shredder handbook

your rare coin collection was
so rare i couldn’t find it if
you are intent on casual touring
don’t get lost in the slush fund

i can hear your bones clicking
you are somewhere out there
in the etheric brambles but
your name is so outdated you
will need a new one – perhaps
several you will be required to make
the purchase yourself

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Derrière monde

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Chris Edwards

To distinguish fact from fantasy, Miss Satin
had grown from the headdress upward into gay
explanations and ratty descriptions. The letter to
Baudelaire had come, or purported to come, from
features of the terrestrial décor — theatre programs,
dinner menus, the infamous Eulogy of Make-up. She
herself had garlanded Nature on great occasions with
plumes of black thought, worn with regrets at the side,
but nothing, she reasoned, could rival a fan, their
abjection as rich as you please or quite simple:
a few recited lines of verse, but most were good
to go. A challenge and a rebuke would follow,
hidden away in her journal, where she
is forced to sleep, eat and drink in order to
protect herself. Something hovers in the far distance:
a shimmering of prospects embossed in gold, of really
artistic design, like the fustanella of a whirling dervish.
Evil is natural, and is therefore likely to torture and kill.
Not so virtue: this natty little animal stupefies even the
best endowed, bifurcating plantwise at the lips and
reshaping the journal’s immense coup de bluff
into a new toilette weaving in and out of waving —
Ah, the sea, sighed meaningfully, can be synonymous
with monde or world (as in signs of spirituality and longing
for the ideal), but its factual role in the everyday, played
by fantastic has-beens, is to set one’s sights on
landing sites, citing every which way.

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Post It

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Gig Ryan

Technique whittled to a spear prongs earth
as tabby night filters a soaped waterfall of recollected words
jammed in a shoe, prudently
It passes on a cloud
and can’t fit in the photo
that dissolves trusty leaves
that feather bright and soft, as if a picture’s jarred time
where unlit books ramble into dream, sleep’s pillion
levering The Anthology of Fireside Chats
away from the grate with an heirloom poker
or more exactly, some crimp heater sloughed by the street
Fill the chute’s leftovers, a mug’s trail of relenting principles
wired to ankle, currency lass in a jumper times the curfew
a ball of discomfort on a vintage beanbag
while daffodils recite – preamble: body-as-quest
tougher than a table of elements in pin-drop pause
Adjust the sigh track near a convocation of analysts
A remix swims over a screen
Talk: plastic

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237, The Overlook

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Bella Li



Act I

Sometime during the winter. In the West Wing the caretaker stacks (neatly, with axe) 20 legs of lamb, 12 turkeys, 2 dozen pork roasts. The Adler on the table in the great white hall (lots of ideas, no good ones). And elsewhere the maze—polaroid dangling from the hand. Topiary fever. Worst we’ve had in years. Downstairs, at the bar, he says: “I love the little son of a bitch” [high-pitched noises, screams] Some blackhearted things, out of the Games Room with their blue dresses walking.




Act II

Scene: floral blue on white. Look, Jack, there ain’t nothing in [elevator music, twins] The carpet soft, geometric. Emerald-green and on the bed (blue robe)—most            dream I ever. Had to see: bathroom, open, green and chrome. Is there is there? Who draws the curtain wide, steps. Out of the bath toward you (you toward her) in the floral West. Marks on the back, pretty white legs. Faithful hands slicing toward you like love.




Act III

Music, balloons. Back at the bar, Lloyd—whiskey for time. Been away but now I’m back. Been away but now I’m. Wolf Creek. Red Mountain. All work and no meat makes [violins] [screams] Where the hell did you, Lloyd? With limp and axe in hand, axe to the heart (the immaculate suit, the voices). Through snow and into the maze Overlook we go.




Act IV

Elevator. Every little photograph on every blank wall: a dull boy. The quiet summer.

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A bar of soap

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Samuel Wagan Watson

For Darren Currie …

Sometimes ANONYMITY is a fantastical doorway into the being of a writer; ANONYMITY is the passport of an unknown agent who knows no constraint to conduct acts of good and evil/ A signatory to the distraction that allows a writer the freedom to attack an unfinished sentence that has imprisoned them/ Wipe clean the restricted access to closure/ The bait of being ANONYMOUS entraps character/ ANONYMOUS is a universal stamp of someone who has the key to the locked riddles of continuity/ WHO are the dark shapes that found your lost wallet?/ WHO are the dark shapes who scratched your car and moulded alleyways with shadow?/ ANONYMITY has the capacity to grease the night with pure immunity of the senses/ To not assume that you know one person from a bar of soap than another is the vaccine of prejudice/ ANONYMOUSLY take a clean bar of soap and lather it into humanity…black and sterile of mystical but innocent, embryotic wonderment …

Watch the shadows dance,
when constrained in a vortex
diffusing magic …

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Marooned

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Toby Fitch

(a homophonic inversion of Rimbaud’s Marine)


DON’T! HOO SANG EX
HORTING TURBINES OF
LOOM O FURRY FRUITS
EXTRA TEA VERITABLY
PILLED UP IN THE FORAY
IF I LENT OUT SIR
CUSS MEN FOR LESS IT’D BE
AUDENRY WE SUCK
ON MENTHOL & REFLUX
LEST WE COO
RUNTS & DILLETAUNTS
SOUL-VENTING
SUTURE BROMANCE
DEBAITS ACCUM UR
LATE LITHPING A PRUDE
ATHEIST
URGENTHY UGH LET’S
CHAR DOZE GENTS WITHER
CURVEBALL
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Et in California Ego

Posted on November 1, 2014 by John Tranter

Last week, I knew it was time to leave the city.
The way the sun glinted off window-panes, a warning
arriving on my front lawn with the morning
newspaper, and the shape of that funny cloud…
and those kids breaking stuff, it shouldn’t be allowed
one time, let alone — the way it is now — twice.
No, man, it’s definitely not pleasant, not nice.
So I packed and got the hell out of this shitty

place, filled the tank, beat it. Hey, it ain’t funny,
the way peculiar things kind of happen
in their odd way, how certain envelopes fall open
at the fatal news, the way your best friends just leave
and abandon you to your career, and you grieve
pointlessly. The Sheriff swings that rawhide goad,
and you take off down that dusty road.
Hey, do you have enough money?

Yes, honey… you turn to look back, but instead
the future appears before you, every day
longer than the last, your dog… say,
was that your dog Hobo disappearing behind that row
of tents? Then a male voice on the radio
speaks a special message just for you, and between
one gas station and the next, that pale green
landscape just grows darker, the blue thread

crawls behind your dawdling ballpoint on the map
as you plot your escape from the horrid Barbary Coast
to that new place, where you can honestly boast
of your massive talent turning out column after column
of prose as mellifluous and convincing as it was solemn,
read by senior executives and beatniks in cafés
along with the morning news of various calamities. Graze
peacefully there, half snoring, your lap-

top snapped shut, but the road begins to wind
higher into the hills, the hairpin bends and turns
causing the brakes to heat up as the rubber burns
from your squealling tires, your fingers crossed
as you check the map and hope you’re not lost,
not in these unspeakable badlands, not just here
where the good things fade into a pale mist, where
you realise you’re lost, and you think you’ll never find

your way home: time to stop and park
in this trailer park, yes, it’s late
with a bad moon rising, with the endless wait
until dawn — don’t nod off! — then you unpack
your flimsies, don pajamas, snooze in back
until you’re woken by the unbearable light of a star
gleaming and glimmering through the trees, as far
from earth as you are from your home, the dark

seeming to grow around you, the clouds to loom
over all the sky, dark now, your cries
feeble and fading over the low rise
ahead, now a train loaded with mounds of coal
pulls by, steel wheels on steel tracks roll
onward and upward, you hear the whistle sing
its mournful song, plucking the single string
of your heart, the low smoke plume

or maybe it’s a locomotive plume of steam
lit from below by a fitful boiler flame.
You know your life ahead of you is just the same
as everything you’ve left behind, the endless night
concealing the world, but then the unbearable light
of the sun does too, with its immense
and world-bestriding blinding indifference —
and, waking, you trudge ahead with your dream.

To keep going demands an awful effort of will.
You know that what you believe is just not natural.
Your life seems like a rusting, failed factory
that tries to manufacture little pieces of sky
but instead makes more dark clouds. You long for release
from that pressure to flee the horror, to find peace.
In the mirror no monster, just a girl who looks pretty.
Start the motor. No more self-pity.

‘Et in California Ego’ began as a draft using the end-words of ‘On visiting a
Borrowed Country House in Arcadia’, by Alicia E. Stallings, in The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of “Poetry” Magazine edited by Don Share.

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Circular Quay

Posted on November 1, 2014 by John Wilkinson

for (but not to) Gig Ryan

You heard me. Don’t pretend you didn’t.
This town’s foliage
corkscrews down from trees that sound
a bit off. Gentles in a neat layer
writhe like a pullover
over what at a distance looks
crisply modelled.
Up close, the scalloped sails pullulate
with air gusts writhing.
But of course you knew what I was
going to say and didn’t have to pay heed.

Closeness cracks me up, it really does.
Eyes water and nostrils stream.
Buddleia brings butterflies across
the straits, and a sticky cloak of caterpillars
strips bark from dragon trees that weep
red blots.
Millions of bits of mirror
set in concrete beckon to the high cirrus.
No they don’t. If we weren’t so close
we’d have to face each other,
swarming across plenteous tiles.

Climate once mutual shrinks to its events.
Connectedness is
building a free state on pontoons
invisible from this wharf,
charging flakes of skin, fish scales
to overlay
paschal hordes showing up
obscurely furious. Words are spat
across the tresses of light breeze
a Koori boy puppets in, clothed
with tattoos of scabies spiralling at work.

I call him warrior and he trickles coin.
Here where paving is so thin if reticulated,
boots trouble the buried: re-
knit with aftershock as by the drop
of heavy fruit,
colonists paw at the straits high above.
They are wanting to shape up but
arise in glitter,
pegging out the foreshore in a seam
of gold studs. Take your hands
out of your pockets, stretch your arms.

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Gibson’s Folly (Tambo River)

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Louise Crisp

‘Treat with Euphrasia bad memory and vertigo’

Gibson’s Folly -
Earth Moving: the precipitous track descends to Wilga portal
and the Tambo

Purple eyebright ringed around closely
in heathy dry forest
lilac, pink or white
‘it comes and goes’
but when it’s gone, gladness
goes with it
the yellow spot behind the lower lobe
a guide to pollinating insects




Rock
Ore
Base metals
Copper & zinc:
The Wilga and Currawong
              massive sulphide deposits are hosted
                            within deformed Upper Silurian volcanics
                                          and sediments of the Gibsons Folly Formation
Other prospects: Dogwood, Mopoke, Big Hand, Banksia, Peppermint, Boxer
And Nameless
But Bigfoot may bear                              GOLD
                                          the richest                              of                              all




High Noon
The Waxlip Anomaly – a magnetic high at 12000N 15300E on the Wilga Grid
Tested by diamond drill but no significant mineralisation was intersected

Waxlip Spur, site of the old Benambra mine processing plant, an acid seep
runs down to the Tambo River & high flows shall dilute the heavy metals

43 species of orchids were discovered in the area including the purple waxlip
Glossodia major which forms no roots and depends upon mycorrizal fungi for nutrition

I run up the bare clay spur to the helipad with a view beyond the failed revegetation
into rugged country from Mt Tambo to the Nunniong escarpment



 
Wilga Spring
Beside the Tambo a natural spring issuing sulphides is a blind
for heavy metal seepage from the tailings dam on Straight Creek upstream.

The small town of Swift’s Creek draws off its water supply 30 kilometres down river.




Horse
Riding with Gibson via the Bundara
Up through Charlie Mac’s to the Bogongs
To lay down salt in trap-yards
Under the dappled sunlight of snow gums
Late spring snowdrifts and dark shadows
Replicate the flanks of piebald horses
                        *
Leaping the shallow stream
At the base of the tailings dam spillway
Last remnant of the rarest swamp
Sphagnum moss, strawberry buttercups
Sun orchids and bluebells
Trampled by hooves gone feral across the Alps




SPZ 633
Blue-tongue greenhood and sprawl of knawel
at the foot of the dam wall -
                                          in their own zone

rare companions among Sphagnum moss:
montane grass-trigger plant alongside dusky violet

when the dam wall is raised twice the height
                                          ‘they were so elusive’




Mountain banksia
High on the dry ridge
cylindrical yellow flowers of Banksia canei
                                                                                    nectar
                                                                                                        licked
                                                                                                                   by
 
eastern pygmy possums and feathertail gliders
and honeyeaters chasing Grevillia, Corea and Callistemon and thirteen species of Eucalypt around
the slopes all year
                                                                                    over
                                                                                                   look
the turquoise dam waters:
700,000 tonnes of

In the steep headwaters valley soon to be flooded more deeply

            mine tailings: copper, zinc, cadmium, lead, arsenic, manganese, antimony
            lying under

absence of euphrasey, blue-tongue, sprawling, and all those precious others
                                                                                viol-ate

under dam waters Sphagnum cristatum and manifold springs along the creek bed
the dam leaks
down through rock,
another 7 million tonnes
to be dumped, vertigo
in

            Lake St Barbara:
            by her name
            poisonous waters
            are rendered innocuous
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Robyn Rowland Reviews Margaret Bradstock

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Robyn Rowland

Barnacle Rock by Margaret Bradstock
Puncher & Wattmann, 2013

Barnacle Rock is time-travelling through poetry. Its significance lies in Margaret Bradstock’s successful inscribing of a journey, from the search for a land of plenty by various explorers, to the position we find ourselves in now: a climate in crisis, a civilisation in error and a country which has displaced its indigenous people, replacing their knowledge with a rusted ‘progress’. Dense, a rich read, it alerts the mind into awareness.

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