A Note.Notes.

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Jon Paul Fiorentino
Not quite done. Turns out. A turn. Turns. Not quite. A note. Notes. In terms of hope pinning. Demonstrably so. Listen to waves of not quite. And crash against. There are breath lines and breadth lines of influence and it’s hard to. Fucking ghost. A ghost. Ghosts. That’s all they do. Spring and reel around gerunds. Aghasting. Lung haul. Ways in. Strike it. A chord. Chords. When you clearly, demonstrably so. When you so. Melody. And though you should. Draft it. Please. Just draft it. We could sullen our way. Pine it. When there’s never a need to resort to prose. Not even. And it’s hard to pin it. Down it. A pin. Pins. And it means something down. To even risk a not quite done. Not sure if it can be parsed. A gift. Gifts. Not divine of course. Just. Adjust. There’s too much to fashion. The manner in which. A manner. Manners. Sprint it. Would settle for trudge. Just move. Just. Fashion it. A fashion. Fashions. Something choral. Risk it when the home rattles. Almost tune. A risk. Risks. When the score doesn’t quite yet. Just. That. Adjust. When the dream won’t die despite years of not quites. And yes. Not quite done. And not quite. Something here though. Something close to effort. Your part. So dependent on parting. And so pinned. Now there’s this song you know you know. It’s just a draft. It’s good though. Loop. Very good. Compose. A symphony. Positively symphonic. So. A draft. Drafts. There. Absolutely there. Very much. Quite done.
Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

You Yangs and Diving Boards

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Toby Davidson

Waves, gravitational
mind-mussings teem,

plunge for the jewel
in the clouds and hit clean.

Car-roar obvious,
Where can it bring?

You Yangs are slumbering,
no slumbering thing.

Refineries, youths
to the ultramarine

excite to become what they thought
they could beam –

low-lidded cirrus,
a hole in a dream

sucked from the slumberer’s
chimney-staked sheen.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Elegy

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Libby Hart

When you died there was death in every room.
I had to place my grieving in a box.

Three years round
I found myself weeping in a darkened cinema
as I listened to George Harrison sing, Here Comes the Sun.

I learn something
every time someone lets go.

With you, I wondered
how long does it take to perfect the method?
You tried and then tried again when no one was looking.

Now I ask,
what if it is rest and nothing else that we want?

From one exile to another, from one pain threshold to the next,
you gave me something I could never quite imagine without you:
poetry and subversive education.

I’d come away with books under my jumper, a quiet sky above my head.
In my mind’s eye your room still burns like the inside of a cigarette.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Pirogue

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Michelle Cahill

A boy, I dreamed of being a captain
in the ocean’s foreign policy, catching
the fast currency, binding my pirogue
with a rope to hold back the breakers.

Listen, today a jazz singer drowned,
the infringing Atlantic shipped pirates
who winch poaching flags as Senegal’s
men scrape in the grimy sweatshop.

If only stories were like driftnets hurled
farther than Rosetta time, but comets too
are spun, desiccating colonies. And oceans
a chagrin, a tattered trellis of sardinia.

Our fish are émigrés, there’s no mercy for
the spawning flurry: our blood flows West
dragged in undertows from Saloum to Seine,
where Europe serves sovereign ministries.

Banks, NGO charities flog our sick children.
We’d starve if not for bushfood: tortoise or
dolphin meat, our villages flood, leave us
licking silt-stained boabs, rum-soaked palms.

But I am one of Senghor’s thin-legged,
migrant sons, too proud to beg for breadfruit;
hungry for Spain. Listen, today we threw
a decomposing body overboard ─ and prayed.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

from the other side of the shark*

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Nathan Shepherdson

for B.R. Dionysius

cut with postmodern wit
i can carry the million pound tag
that will not release me
back into the wild

draw your outline on the glass
as you decipher the self
(in formaldehyde)
to witness again
how your mother pulled the teeth
you never knew she had
until you found them in your chest

the animal
you chose not
to cut in half
is the animal
known to leave
half an animal
in your hands

did we float
in this publicly listed company
along with other shareholders
who invest in the potential
for our death

this animal ←
was born when a photograph
could only persuade us
in the negative

so step back in the water

lean forward in the polaroid

your trial bite is free
unusual for a killing
to be launched
immediately

a bite made
so gently the victim
is unaware

as a survivor
you came ashore to describe
how you were bumped
by something →

← taken aback
by the sight of blood
streaming from a dozen incisions
harp notes on the skin
demonstrating how a life
could have been
unbuttoned

so step out of the water

many attacks are nothing more

( ) than a →

catch/
hold & release/
exercise/

your childhood never knew
the colour in a polaroid
would not last

this is a notable exception to there

a moment we re/hearsed
that cannot take its big idea to the grave
until either the lungs or the laughter
subside

this line was thrown out
because it was not needed
because one nightmare is efficient enough
energy equal to the substantiation of itself
fuel in a vein
pumping liquid cinema
into a lonely tank
rivets scalded to pinched sleep
where images combust in a rib brazier
intent on self defence
against our own cold thought

drifting in our craft
you offer the assurance
that with fourteen lines
you can pull in sharks
by the metre

on the fourth day
the lines yielded a large tyger
which you towed ashore
and opened on the beach
belt-tight in an underglow of rutile glare
poorly shielded by wind-shook hessian
as you felt the bulging stomach
you went cold as i ran
as you ran your hands
ran my hands over a smooth dome
→ obviously
the head of the unfortunate

you have altered the head
by not noticing
it’s there

you have altered the head
by not noticing
its face

this great blunt head
almost square edged
attacking a bait at speed
the teeth unmistakable
oblique blades deeply notched
rearward and cockscomb like
the flesh untethered from the bone
salted blue in a myth is deep fear
catapulted powerless to its red end

this great blunt head
almost square edged
abates its attack at speed
in its current life
unrolled over clean cartilage
is the physical prayer
is the swim in an uneven hunt
to bite off hands together in pairs
in communion in communion
incommunicado

your head was dismantled
by the fishbone
dreaming in your throat

every hour awash from every hour
the tide nothing but a broom
to sweep its infinite floor

items to recover
from the recovered animal
include

a lump of coal

a tattooed arm with rope around its wrist

a handbag containing a watch in perfect time

you have been sent here
to pay excise on lost memory

you are the only live bearer in this sentence

given the dubious honour
of evaluating every letter
to redecorate irrational probability
with the fresh stomach contents
from one suggestion

such an animal
is not easily brought
to the weighing station
much simpler to send it
to the auction house
to let an adman’s account
swallow gold value added as fillings
to a theoretic smile

white belly to white belly
position switched you stand above
lie below your uncut gnathic beast
held palm to sweated palm
its skin again the handle to an art
taut same-kawa on a Japanese sword
as sharp as sharper than mutual emulation
the price too to not cut it in half
to see ourselves in the same body
on this same line

we are hooks set back to back
only to have our animal escape
by straightening one hook
and breaking off the other

our kiss can only consist of teeth

we circle in the moment before
our spiracles ventilate cold steam
unthought through necessary instinct

our eyes will be reported as being
‘gleaming black’ protected by objective spirits
living inside transparent white eyelids
which will slam shut across our vision
when we launch the attack
on each other

this is the only known instance
where two lives were lost
in one shark

the physical death
of impossibility
in the mind
of someone living

in water
the shadows are too skilled
to pay their ransom

this broken ocean
will push these broken eyes
to the unfixed surface
of our last eye
in space

i was not said to myself
because you named me
without saying anything

*Or: remembering when B.R. Dionysius & Damien Hirst (both) wearing sharkskin suits met in the bar
of a luxury hotel – clinked glasses – but said nothing because they (both) knew Vic Hislop was still out
fishing.

Note: some passages, phrases and words were transcribed, copied or adapted from Fishes of Australia
by E.M. Grant (E.M. Grant Pty Ltd, Scarborough, 1987) and Guide to Fishes by E.M. Grant (Department
of Harbours and Marine, Brisbane, 1982).

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Film

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Susan Fealy

after Tacita Dean

i
A toe winces in the corner
As if inside a shoe.
So many frames
Inside frames.
Is a panelled door
A building spliced into rooms?
I cling to possibility,
Two figures blur to three—
Glimpse of lakes on the moon.
Spots of red
Spark like jewels,
Disrupt my living.


ii
In this tunnel of light
No paintbox of blood:
White noise
Flickers polka-dots,
Around its navel
The waterfall runs backwards.
The single pine at dusk
Collects pink neon spots—
Like wormholes.
Like cracks that distil
What light there is.


iii
My personal Everest
Seen from above—
Sharp as a shredded moon.
White nitrogen
Pulses its lost horizon,
A chimney blows pompoms
into a no comment sky.
The doorway clings to blue,
Mountains uluru the red.
Pale ocean sweeps in real time,
Sweeps it out again.


iv
Giant bubbles parry
Downward drift,
Stay intact,
Comply.
A black-and-white orange
Globes so close
It almost dreams a breast.
An egg sits on an apartment ledge.
The quality of flower-pink
Is a contract she clutches in one hand
Not like Mondrian’s return
To infinite flower-shops
Nor pared-back Chagall.


v
A white-barred pigeon pecks
The edge of a field.
The escalator offers up,
But only travels down.
Black slate is spilt
In filmic light:
The floor’s too deep,
The light too shallow.
Nothing lives
Outside its apparition.
Nothing not known at last.

Note: ‘Is a contract she clutches in one hand’ and ‘paintbox of blood’ are from ‘The Fall’by Jordie Albiston.
‘Nothing not known at last’ is a minor adaptation of a phrase from ‘Everythings’ by Alex Skovron.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Jeoffry

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Julie Chevalier

after Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart

I testify I was one of only four women going in quest of food
by teaching in the boys high school. Consider this: in my first class dwelt
thirteen Geoffreys, Jeoffrys or Jeffreys, nine Garys or Garrys, four Gavins
and two Garths. The Lord’s poor included Keith, Kevin, Kelvin and Trevor
of the tribe of Tiger. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s propeller hung
on the library wall keeping the Lord’s watch in the night
against the adversary. When the photo of Sir Charles looks up
for his instructions I ask him to spin me out of Sydney Technical High
over the parking lot, past the science and maths teachers’ Fords and Holdens,
their bumper stickers spruiking Billy Graham’s long gone revival crusade.
It appeared that the entire Maths/Science Faculty had accepted
English cats as the best in Europe. It was 1968.
The glory of god was in the air. As were drugs.

On April Fool’s Day as we car-pooled past the newsagency
Ray (Commerce) said, Look at that sign, ‘LBJ quits.’
‘Naahh,’ I said with a mixture of gravity and waggery,
‘Probably cigarettes. Not the presidency, surely.’ I’d picked up ‘surely’
trying to spraggle upon waggle at Sydney Uni.

If I’d known the tune I would have danced
Plath’s love set you going like a fat gold watch.
I sailed down the library corridor in the psychedelic spinnaker
I wore on odd days, just as a Third Form student
whistled, Yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy.
I certainly had. By stroking … i had found out electricity.

‘No, only seven months. Two to go.’ Afraid of detection I lied
to Principal Brown, who, by July, with the passing quickness
of his attention, still had no idea who I was.
Every family had one cat at least in the bag. But, catching the cork
and tossing it again, what to name the sproglet if it were a boy?

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Seven Ways of Mourning

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Marcelle Freiman

1
Your name bends out of reach,
the final spike shreds the skins
of my remembering.


2
Engraved on stone, words
tell: they came to this country
they lived here, and died.


3
To show you scarlet
bougainvillea in autumn –
your dark hound refused it.


4
Throw waiting hours
down like coins in black water:
lost, they shake like stars.


5
The name rests, a bench
by the sea: fingertip touch
on each breaking wave.


6
If everything ran
out, each vessel empty, clean,
would muscle turn to stone?


7
Forgetting is like
light on sharp edged fences,
clears spaces between.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Who Is to Say

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Lisa Jacobson

That Parisian woman who did not like
her children is long gone while I remain,
who love my own too much. Although

her red armchair still occupies the space
beneath the window in your study.
There was the day we tried to move it

but the chair refused to go, wedging
its bulk against the door frame.
Some things are not so easily disposed of

and besides, I like that chair; the way
it holds me when I sit in it to read.
Who is to say what makes someone leave

and brings another in her place?
Only that all past lovers leave
their sultry trace.

Farm girl, you call me, despite mid-age,
working in the garden or fetching mail,
still in my pyjamas, past midday.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Broken Ocean

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Margaret Bradstock

“What was missing was the cries of seabirds that surrounded
the boat on previous voyages …” – Ivan Macfadyen, yachtsman.

In the past we’d seen birds following the boat
resting on our mast like sentinels
or wheeling in the distance
feeding on pilchards.
The birds were missing because there were no fish
no sound but wind in the rigging waves knocking
against the hull the steady thud of debris.

Now a mother-ship’s trawling the reef
stripping it day after day
working at night under floodlight.
We feared pirates but Melanesian men
came alongside with gifts sugar-bags full of fish.
All they wanted was tuna the rest dumped as rubbish
in the maw of that rotting sea.

After we left Japan lights of small moored ships at its edges
battered freighters and patrol boats the ocean itself was dead
the shape of a tumorous whale rolled on the surface
like the dome of an old Buddhist stupa
or an alien power-plant.

Power-poles snapped off by the last killer wave trail wires
in the middle of the ocean yellow plastic buoys synthetic rope
fishing lines and nets our propeller entangled
as though in a mangrove swamp.
No turtles dolphins flurries of birds
or sharks for 3,000 nautical miles.

In the waters above Hawaii you could see right into the depths
skeletal as xray artworks collages of modernity
debris all the way down soft-drink bottles
pieces of junk the size of a truck a factory chimney
sticking out of the water.
Sailing through this garbage dump plastic and flotsam
scraping the length of the boat

we’d push for a fleet to clean up the mess
if environmental damage from burning the fuel
wasn’t worse than just leaving it there.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Here

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Patricia Sykes

Stepping from white into black
from day into night.
Called out by who knows what.
The night jasmine perhaps, the fireflies,
the rising coolness of the water tank.
All day a folding of facts, thoughts,
wants, packing a new history
to take back on the plane, south
to where the ticket flies, your name
a stub, a booking with an address
devoid of the self you thought

was you so little effort needed
to embrace unpeopled hectares,
stars crawling over the hill
like incandescent spiders, a sudden
owl in whisper flight, a lethal silence
of beak and claw which you permit
to trap your small squeak of fright;
listening then through the night
to Earth’s silent orbit, wishing for
a way to unmanufacture noise, for
a way to keep yourself timelocked,
here, where your loudening city
has no foothold, no residence.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

(Late at Night Bruny Island)

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Ken Bolton

here
in the bookshelves of the
holiday house is a book of
John’s poems—also
Les—a fat spine
appropriately.
Why is that here?
Masochism?
I am unlikely to read it.
Anyway,
I wonder what John’s got to say—
this time.
*
The rest of the shelf
is novels others have left.
*
Across
the table from me
my jacket is draped over the chair,
reminding me a little of John—
a presence and an absence. It
looks more like what he would wear
than I would—& it’s empty,
no one there.
Why write
so often about John Forbes? I knew him
only so well.
To
rise to some challenge
—test—
or ‘occasion’, yes?
(No?) (Maybe?)

The radio—
ABC from Hobart—
is playing: very good music
that I don’t know—
in the adjoining room, so it’s
both on but ignored
easily enough, as if I’m
alone more or less—
opposite the chair & jacket,
looking at it, but sometimes
at the things between us on the table
a thin-striped table cloth, blue &
white—pens pencils salt & pepper shakers—
books—that Cath & I are reading—
one of those yellow Spirax notebooks
A-5, a small stub of candle …
a tape measure,
also black & yellow—black with some yellow detailing.
Stuff.
The light is mounted
behind me, on the wall,
rather than above:
the room is lit like a bar
or cantina—& they are those sort
of doors opposite, too—
bar-room half doors, open,
leading into the middle space
(& the radio).
Low ceiling, stucco walls, an earthen,
nougat-magenta The shelves—
the book shelves—
since I began with them,
are on my left, at
the far end of the room.

This is not the sort of poem
John would write.
He would not see the point.
And in fact I don’t see the point
as yet, tho I may hope to find one.

Christ knows where.

The
news is on now, following
cricket all day. It would have been
worth following it
most of the last decade, for
Kerry O’Keefe’s commentary—
his wheezy laugh, his humour—
tho I didn’t. (John might have.
But John has been gone
a bit too long.)

I always
try to write something
when I’m down here, on Bruny.
Start
& wait & see where they go. John chimes
with the cricket—& maybe with
the cowboy bar-doors—but otherwise
he is a bit urban
to gel with the island—
& holidays. Or is that just
John-as-I-conceive-him? He
happens to be on the shelf tho.
That is a fact.
I look at the poems,
from the back: ‘Love Poem’, ‘Night Shift’,
‘History of Nostalgia’
“ … attitude
is the poems’ currency, an asset
only when it is spent” it says
on the cover. I wonder if John
wrote that copy.

I wonder
where I am going with this?

A long time trying to locate an attitude
or summon one—like someone scowling,
or non-committal, leaning against a wall
(near a corrugated iron water tank—
as I envisage it—now—tho how or why?)
who pushes himself away, finally, with
some resolve

(spits in the grass?)

throws smoke away / spits in the grass

Tho this is uncharacteristically—of me—
not quite urban, & Australian, tho
I am an Australian.

Like 24 million other people

—Is that my attitude?—

more or less the same, more or less different; up late
in my case; trying to write poetry

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Art Tatum

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Geoff Page

1909 — 1956

The legends and the anecdotes
are only half of it;
Charlie Parker early on,

night-club kitchen, washing plates
just to hear the sound
then saying as saxophonist

‘I wish I could play like
Tatum’s right hand’;
the story too when Heifetz brought

Sergei Rachmaninoff to listen,
the pianist and composer saying,
‘My God, it’s hot in here’;

then Heifetz, with a grin:
‘Only for pianists’.
A big man, almost blind,

Art Tatum sat there on a stool,
addressing the piano,
two hands floating on the keys

(‘hardly touching,’ people said)
and not a trace of histrionics,
just the smile, convivial,

as if he were no more involved
than any other listener,
loving just the repertoire,

the Broadway / Tin Pan Alley stalwarts,
lyrics drifting in the air.
Whether or not the audience

had managed five grades with the nuns
or never hit a note,
the man’s arpeggios

would always leave them gasping —
not just the speed but all that
detail of articulation,

the heady soar of mathematics
threatening abandonment
but not, at last, the tonic.

Each two bar rest became
a sort of short sonata
hinting at a future

he’d finally abjure.
At times, to offer variation,
there’d be some counterpoint,

left hand glancing at the right,
right hand nodding back.
Behind it all was ‘Harlem Stride’,

Fats Waller, James P. Johnson,
the bar room and the barrelhouse
but that was just an inside joke,

a smile from time to time.
Who can say what technique ‘means’,
apart from all those scales + talent?

Of course, it is a miracle
but what is left to say
when all the options are supplied

in one man’s summary of hands?
Sometimes, they’d have him play with rhythm,
a back-up of guitar and drums,

even add a horn or two
but they could never be the point.
The orchestra was there already,

black and white, all eighty-eight.
‘That man plays way too much piano,’
the mother of a friend declared

and briskly left the room.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Marathon

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Peter Rose

Hard to believe perhaps, but Catullus
is not without magnanimity –
whatever people say. Nervy Quintius
sits up all night drafting an exquisite apology,
one demanding new feats of masochism.
Otherwise, Quintius is convinced,
Catullus will trash his latest eclogues
because of that historic faux pas of his:
the one Quintius has regretted for twenty years.
Young they both were, newly published,
with equal billing at the notorious gallery:
the voguish one will those suspect nudes.
Why, why, why, Quintius berates himself,
did he read for so long – an hour longer
than intended, someone rumoured:
leaving Catullus with less than a minute
(which he filled suavely, smilingly,
with a one-line poem). On and on it goes:
self-flagellation followed by recrimination.
Quintius’ guilt is torrential, and for once
he can’t blame anyone but himself.
What he doesn’t realise
is that there’s no need for these
orgasms of remorse. Catullus,
when he reads Quintius’ abject letter,
can’t even recall the occasion:
not the gallery, not the epic poems,
not the young man’s hubris,
not even the flagrant nudes on the wall.
Catullus had just fallen in love with Lesbia,
and he was beyond hearing, beyond insult.

(from The Catullan Rag)

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Early
 Morning
 Music


Posted on May 1, 2014 by Andrew Taylor

5.03

First
 scribble 
of 
birdsong

scrabbles 
the 
edges
 of 
sleep

it’s 
cold
 I 
hunch 
the 
sheet

higher 
over 
my 
shoulder

you
 sleep 
silent

and
 warm 
beside 
me



5.17

A 
double
 thump 
on 
our 
drive

the 
newspapers


cylinders 
of 
babble 
and 
shout

whisper
 nudge 
and 
lament

huddle
 under 
their 
flimsy 
covers

until
 that 
first 
coffee



5.29

Wide
 awake 
now

the
 good
 news 
the 
all
 clear

is
 like 
your 
warmth
 beside 
me

I
 want 
to 
shout 
it 
to 
the 
heavens

but
 who 
wants 
to 
see 
a 
silver 
haired 
man

barefoot
 and 
in 
a 
dressing 
gown

skipping
 down 
a 
still 
dark
 street

hollering 
his 
hallelujahs?
–

besides
 it’s 
raining



5.36

chip 
chip

chip
 chip 
a 
thin

chirp 
in 
our 
garden

chisels 
the 
darkness

a 
chink 
of
 first 
light 
creeps 
in

some 
insistent 
bird 
poking 
and 
scraping


shut
 up 
you 
idiot 
chiseller

you’ll 
wake 
the 
wattlebird



5.44

Oh 
no! 
here 
it 
comes


its
 first 
tentative 
notes

harmonious
 as 
a 
broken

crank shaft

now 
it 
goes
 hammer 
and
 tongs

whatever 
it 
might 
be
 expressing

splattered 
over 
the 
sunrise

the
 only 
way 
to
 stop 
it

to 
chop 
its 
tree 
down



6.03

I 
can 
sleep 
another 
hour

then
 I’ll 
hear 
you


stir 
turn 
and 
stare 
at 
the 
clock

the 
birds 
have 
gone 
silent

nudged 
out
 by 
a 
ground
 base

of
 traffic 
and 
sunlight
‐

time
 to 
make 
our 
own 
music


Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Coffee at the Palace of the Great Hoon

Posted on May 1, 2014 by John Tranter

hoon |huːn| Austral./NZ informal; noun: a lout or hooligan, especially a young man who drives
recklessly. the whole family was wiped out because some drunken hoon had to drive his car. ORIGIN
1930s: of unknown origin.

His beard tangled around his shanks as he descended
the rain-wet stairs, and from the garden a macaw called
In a red tongue. There were two of me, I was beside myself
As I helped untangle the Great Hoon’s beard.
‘Shall I speak?’ spake the Great Hoon. ‘Oh, I’m all ears,’
I replied. Spittle everywhere. Jewels here and there
Scattered on the gleaming stone, opals rained
On the glowing marble, and I thought I heard
Between the Parrot’s paragraphs of speech, a distant sea
Murmuring on a granulated strand, and thought I saw
Among the glittering foliage, in the mirror of myself,
The Gaudy Hoon made immeasurably strange.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

The House Went Quiet

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Jamie King-Holden

a nebula of flowers has self-abased,
its spent petals circle a jam jar,
their genus lost.

i’ve been instructed on the
benefaction of decay—
the merciless cues.

i read birthday letters with
my eyes closed and pack
postcards from Spain into
shoeboxes crypt-tight.

in the kitchen sink a blushing
cork locates north and a stale
paddock as empty as a punch line.

i wrap chipped plates in headlines,
let one break into alien continents,
its own atlas.

i enter a room with a made bed.
the ivory sheets remain an effigy
for buckled limbs and midnight cake.

outside, cars play their games.
the neighbour’s grey dog lets itself be known.
Summer carols on, indistinct.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Archaeology

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Zenobia Frost

1.
In a mythical demountable
we are students of the sword,

cotton-gloved rabbits,
a few aeons late
to taste the blade’s full thrust.

Creeping green curdles bronze,
suckles the edges off. It sleeps

in its labelled, cardboard
coffin – one eye open,
aching to callous palms,
aching for salt and bone.

Bronze molecules grit
their teeth at tender reverence:
millennia of students
who stroke away
the knife’s last trace of blood.

2.
I shaved my legs before I came over.

You noticed, and said
they were whitewashed pillars,
artful ruins beneath the lights.

Maybe you should buy dimmer bulbs;
I wouldn’t want to you to surmise
too much. I’m here to forget.

You shine your torch
and chisel and brush, and
chalk an X over certain parts.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Lesson

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Eileen Chong

‘Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.’
‘Wild Geese’, Mary Oliver

Over the empty distance between continents
we transmit facsimiles of affection. Your daughter,
the elder, has learnt to count. She can list the things
I have sent her: dresses, toy cats, a tent, picture books

about Australia. The younger has no words yet, but you tell me
she sometimes points to a photograph of Rob and myself.
I have seen her exactly twice. I do not yet know her smell,
the stretch and tangle of her limbs, her shifting weight in my arms.

My grief is also anger at death; at my inability to create,
sustain and free. Meanwhile, your girls grow: now they stand,
now they walk and talk. One day when we were alone I taught her
a new word: silver. She tried it on her tongue, the word taking shape.

Later, when we passed the sculpture, silver, of her own volition.
We could not now unlearn what we had carelessly, lovingly been taught.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Hunter-gatherers

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Broede Carmody

for Amber Beilharz

We wrestle bone-shapes from sand
too quick to crumble. The landscape heaves
and trembles at your touch. Air bruising from the
wet brush of our words.

I pry molluscs from shallow rock pools
and you liberate them
from their calcium-bodies with the lip of your knife.
Their soft underskin reminds me of kidneys:
innocent and eel-ugly.

Your red bucket with its chipped paint
becomes almost too heavy to hold.
The sun folds itself behind the sea and we make
our way home like old philosophers driving in the dark.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Palm—Reading

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Autumn Royal

After Louise Cotton’s Palmistry and Its Practical Uses

My reason curls around—possibility—the practice
of cheirosophy—the prediction of character as demarcated by the hand—

each line & mark—sparks a meaning that deepens
as the reader traces the heart line towards—Jupiter’s etching.

There is a game I used to play—my pale hands
clasped in fists—held heavy by my thighs—see if you can meddle them apart—

I’m masking a gleaming wonder—light bleeding between
the spaces of my spindly fingers—breaths dampen as the knuckles

whiten & the fingertips tingle—numb.

I am going to play this game again—rereading
myself against the yellowed pages of my Mother’s palmistry book—my hands

spread wide—exposing the left palm—moist with memories—
a long Apollo finger denotes an appreciation of beauty & a tendency to bend

the truth. My hands are always on the edge—
of conversations—their hushed syllables morph into snarls—hanging for a cliff

to grip—fortunes aside—the lines of a hand
reveal traces of a more cutting explanation—when Death knocks—a person

covers their thumbs—inside the fingers & palm.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Linen Closet

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Ray Briggs

The two men snarl across the sheets, a Babel tangle.
He runs his tongue along the weird word of his body.
He wraps his skin in moans behind a stack of towels,
forgets his name, digs down to where delight is buried.

Later, he’ll bring the borax, brillo, bleach. He’ll scrub
the sense back into language. Him and her. And it—
inanimate. No sweat, no stains. He’ll stick the bubbles
back in his mouth. The monogram will speak the truth.

What of his lover? Steamed away. And who can prove
his limbs were more than rumors, his whispers more more than vapor?
A magic trick: you wrap him in a pillowcase
and tap your wand. Abracadabra rabbit rapture.

Midnight. He cleans his mouth with whisky. He can’t sleep.
He takes another shower. The house is full of soap.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Suggestions for Lady Macbeth

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Chloe Wilson

Try vinegar. Our grandmothers trusted
its knack for stripping back
organic matter. Try bicarbonate of soda,
try lemon, try tepid water spiked
with alka seltzer. Work before the fizz
dissipates. No success? If the affected area
resembles a spilt cabernet, dunk it whole
in semillon – those most alike know best
how to dissolve one another. Still no luck? Go
to the cupboard under the sink, try sugar soap,
hydrogen peroxide, anything with a caution,
an exclamation mark, crossbones in a diamond.
Should any telltale trace remain, light a flame
under the hotplate. When the smoke
begins to rise, stretch your fingers out
like a concert pianist – then come, come,
come, come, come – give me your hand.

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Biography of Elvis

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Claire Nashar

(after Mark Leidner)

They say Elvis could shoot a hoop from twelve metres out.
They say it was because he was missing a tiny bone
in each of his wrists.
They say that when he sweated the inside of his clothes
became gilded, and if they happened to already be gilded, became
like rainbows or supernovae.
They say that Elvis had a way with birds.
They say that this explains the mob of ornithologists that tried
to kill him in Georgia.
They say that once, after observing the flight of a group of grey
pigeons, Elvis predicted the rise and fall of the Spice Girls.
They say that if you listen to Blue Suede Shoes backwards, that’s
what it says.
They say that when Elvis was a child he often saw the ghost of a dog
that had been shot in the head.
They say that when he was older he drank dom peringon just to
forget it.
They say that he once lived in Alaska, in a spare log cabin with a
potbelly stove, and watched movies about pilgrims on
the television sets which he collected to people his
home with presidents and game show hosts.
They say that he once visited Sydney, Australia, but I’m not sure
I believe that one.
They say that Elvis never told a lie.
They say that he married for love.
They say that when his heart broke for the first time he created a dance move
so sad that it would break all other hearts forever, but that it made
him so afraid that he died without ever showing it to anyone.
They say that Elvis was a born a Leo, but that in end
it didn’t matter.
They say that if he had been born an insect he
would have made a great bumble bee.
They say that if Elvis had been born a fruit-bearing tree
he would have been a Santa Rosa plum.
They say that if Elvis had never been born at all, Michael Jackson
would have been forced to invent him out of plasticine
and chux wipes and to breathe the breath of life
into his puny open mouth.
All in all, they say that Elvis was sometimes a very sad man.
They say that after Michael Jackson brought him to life
Elvis cried and cried and cried.
They say that to this day, he has not moved in a very
long time.
They say he had a twin brother who died at birth
in a shack in Mississippi, about that one
the biographers tend to agree.
They say that whenever he checked out of a hotel
he would write the cleaners of that hotel a heartfelt
message on the special hotel stationary and sign it
with a flourish of the special hotel pen, which afterwards
he would sometimes, but always absentmindedly,
put in his pocket.

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