Cordite Poetry Review

In Whiskey Gully

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Zenobia Frost

Miromiro speaks

he sounds her out
scoutishly—a collector

Do you speak Tomtit?

an unremembered house
shingled—crisscrossing green
it could rain and take a year
for the forest
to sup to its roots

from the flat ramble
up whiskey-reeling paths
Miromiro circles

she does not speak
his darting lingo
she speaks green
catbird, a little curlew
sleepless
tongues

her blood claims
to know this gully’s oxygen
and quickens to it

homely predators
her feet and pulse

faltering
across streams
clinging to walls
like a gecko
dirt under nails

a bannister of nettles
guides hands
to oil-capped mushrooms
neighbourly dock leaves

stretched below
the clear river
wouldn’t mind
lapping at sinew
cavorting with bones

still Miromiro follows
an omen in her chest
sets minute talons
in throbbing muscle

she is flightless—below
everything is sharp and bright

a final incantation
of undoing

she is alone

but for Miromiro

who watches as she sobs
relief over the nettles

purging a body sunk
with listless crowded terrors

she is finally alone

the forest keeps on
plants arch spines for late sun
and nettles drink a little salt

Miromiro
stops asking questions

but nods and fixes himself
more firmly
slows her blood
to a stream’s unhurried pace

and down through the gully
she remembers

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Zenobia Frost

Q, Without My Female Typist

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Nicholas Powell

          I believe I was the first to see the possibility of pulling up the
            timber and opening up this land.
                                        -J. Bjelke-Petersen.

At the window ledge, meadow-edge, misreading Tranströmer:
‘The ~~mind~~ wind walks in the pine forest’.

wind
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
mind

w nd ow l
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
m d ow

Raven shoe
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
v sh

Tyres through tableland rain, away from the eye and cow-
lick. Perception of desert: p [arched, enlarged ____________ =

hawk orbit, camel gallop . . . . Hums settled in the 1880’s
to pan, to concentrate bits . . . . . . . . . to criticise severely . . .

A map in the dictionary: Ayr. Alice. Lana. Tara. Lucinda. Julia
Creek. Longreach. Eagleby. WhoWillPlayWithMe. Browns
Plains. Texas. Incontinence. Tambourine. Biddaddaba. Black-

all. Banana. Comet. Dingo. Dundoo. Hungerford. War-
wick. Archer Bend. Marian. Saddle Hill. Laura. Blackwater.
Whitewood. Beaudesert{from beau desir: beautiful wish}.

Surprised by my wife, sprung at the map. A split-
second to read her face: Are you homesick?

Quail Pie. Welsh Rarebit. Scone. Lamington. Lavender Bags.
Jack’s Verandah. Queen Anne’s Lace. Spongecake. Honey
Jumbles. Iced Vo-Vo.

She calls me Pu-pu, slang for bunny.
Daddy flatten rabbit so garden grow. I show her

photos. The belletrist in chaps and plastic sheriff
badge: Winner, Beaudesert Show, Best Cowboy, 1980.

Albert and Logan asleep in their beds, murmuring masculine
river names.

Footfalls rattle the dwelling on stilts, stable
as an upside-down cake, candles for pillars.

Lightning’s echo and impossible wattage.
White fields.

In the lull we collect hail for the freezer, count the rainbow
lorikeet feathers the wind will keep.

The belle, the tryst that isn’t. To woo: we draw eyes on our
helmets to trick mother plover, shy of eye. See also, swoop.

Picnic: the make of her bike.
Her eraser: an Ideal Rabbit, or Rabbit Ideal. To recall.

Fearing the Indonesian Invasion of Quilpie, King Bobcat
stockpiles tins of beans, automatic weapons, wine. He tinkles
Vic Hislop. A shark in the canal, a dental profile in a string of
young ankles. A fin diminishing in the true blue.

Muir slices his paddlesteamer in two, naming one half,
The Scottish Prince — soon wrecked on the Southport bar,
not far from The Walrus: our first paddlewheel steamship

distillery. Bring the sugar aboard, dance the molasses, then a
fiery, white spirit. For colour, add caramel. Age for as little as
possible. Sell Walrus Rum up and down the River Barrow.

So suddenly I was the owner of a bulldozer. Rather than let it sit idle, I
took it down to a small property . . . covered by large trees, hundreds . .

The belletrist pines on a ridge, in a salmon flat in TwoWrongs,
to slalom (a race against time over a zigzag course), from the
Norwegian\sloping track\ Off with the glasses. On go
the goggles. See double. To trumpet: see trumpet, too, The

-lonius. Meanwhile, back at Quasi-Triangle, the ‘bleeding
obvious’ is bottlenecking in my tonsils, sprouting a crown:
Best Coward, 2000. Country music made me do it—get some
sand in my shoe, tie it up with wire.

Is it a cocka-tiel, or –two? That’s not
a wife. This is a wife: juggler of whippersnippers. She is my
Red-rumped Parrot, slang for slang. She calls me

Stubble Quail: one who tends or drives cattle, part
-icipant in rodeos, frontier cha-cha. Today you would see a huge
area covered with brigalow. Not tomorrow. One of many men

without their mothers. The tail of the Q the loop of the lasso
(when he’s in a fight). Taboo. Cuckoo! Cuckolded by my lie.
True Owl’s decoy eyes misinterpret signs{stop, smoke}

having pulled the trees I bulldozed them into huge piles for burning . . .
crowds of people had been turning up to watch . . . so impressed by what

they saw that before I finished clearing that paddock
my bulldozer had been hired for my first two jobs.

This pre-dates Florence, female typist: konekirjoittajatar.

a good example of how you can sell people
an idea if you can demonstrate to them how it works.

Homesick: Unsound jodhpur-longing. Gravestone Slalom.
Jupiter Island. ~~Lush littoral rainforest covered~~ much of Surfers.

Being Eagle,
I am barely holding on
to the tail of a rat.
To be honest,
I cannot find
a use for it. Can you?

I’m asking you, riflebird, common white-eared monarch, pow . .

rfu ow
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
powe l l

Acknowledgements
The italicized couplets are taken from Derek Townsend’s biography of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, Don’t You Worry About That!: The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs, Angus and Robertson, 1990. The line,‘The wind walks in the pine forest’, is from Samuel Charters translation of Tomas Tranströmer’s poem, Baltics, Oyez Press, 1975.

A note on the poem
Angela’s inventories opened up multiple possibilities for exploring Queensland and my perspective to it. My response touches on anecdotal, political, and environmental dimensions. It plays with the dangers of nomenclature, anthropomorphism and zoomorphism. It is poly-vocal, but it remains unclear where one voice ends and another begins, indicating a porous membrane of responsibility, and an inherited and perpetuated legacy of masculine destruction. I borrow from the biography of a former Qld premier. There is some cultural punning also, including a handful of phrases from the John Williamson song, ‘True Blue’. This is not meant to offend, but to entertain.

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Nicholas Powell

Starling Mimicry

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Michelle Dicinoski

Don’t expect anything new.
You know my kind:
          aberrant honeyeater
                    bell miner
                              berrypecker.
We are mock and echo
you say we’ve ripped your song
                                          but that’s another story.
               The isle
is full of noises. Listen.

They have lost nothing from this change
          do the can-can, cancan can
The main thing the ACL wanted was to take out
the mimicking parts of the acts          says Wendy Francis
          Queensland director of the Australian Christian Lobby
     wendyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy          wendywend
          wen wen wen when when when when when
a civil partnerships system mimics marriage
                    and attempts to set up a marriage-like system
when when when when can can can

In songbirds, the choice of song is learned
but the need to sing’s instinctive.
Maybe for humans, too.
In mountainous parts of the Canary Islands and Turkey
the hill people whistle to talk
across miles of rock and cliff.
A dialogue of trills and warbles
rings out all day, the air filled with the
uncorded, foldless language
of lip and tongue and breath.

(the canary is named after the Canary Islands
which are named after
dogs that might have been seals
but no one knows for sure.
Origins aren’t what they used to be)

Mozart bought a starling in May of 1784.
It sang back to him a scrap of his Piano Concerto No. 17
with a G natural turned sharp. Some scholars say
it wasn’t Mozart who composed it
but the bird.

When the starling died, Mozart staged a funeral
and wrote an elegy.
Poems about Mozart’s starling have been written by
Daneen Wardrop, Karl Kirchwey, Robert Cording, and
Ralph Burns.
Something here about mimicry and love and awe.
Something here about creation.

the mimicking parts
          wendywendy can wendy can wendy can do
do the can-can
show us your galop infernal
          daneeeeeeeeen daneeeeeeeeen
                    star
-ling
          Love you Queenslaaaaaaand
               Where the Bleijie hell are you?
ralphburns ralpburns ralphburns ralphburns
drop war
                    star
-ling
drop war
star-ling
drop

When singing back the songs they have heard
starlings tend to sing off-key
and to sing fragments only.

How do songbirds transmit vocal motifs?
Researchers report that a starling cried mizu, mizu (Japanese for ‘water’)
             after it flew to the tap for a drink.
Another screamed
defence
          defence
          defence
after listening to basketball on TV.

Common starlings,
we spread the bridal creeper
we probe and sally and lunge and glean
as each new man comes with nets or traps
or talk or gun or broom.

We speak in more tongues than you can fathom.
Our variations on your song are not
variations on your song.
What came first, theme or variation?
No, think again:
What came first,
theme or variation?

It’s not that we want to be chickens or phones
or humans or alarms
          just starlings
                                                  just us just us
          but we like to talk
and talk back to the world
and chickens speak chicken
phones speak phone
and maybe everything seems like mimicry
if you only listen for yourself.

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Michelle Dicinoski

Cartography

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Vanessa Page

Territory is suburbia is an atlas of orange-bricked battlelines.
Where driveway mouths spit mortar like broken teeth and cold wars cauterise domestic skin.
This is where I have mapped you.

                                              mango pulp
                                              bruise-lidded sky
                                              a storm hymnal

When the sky bleeds out of this heat blister, it will wash away nothing.
Passionfruit will lay defeated by the fence. Territorial birds will remain the aggressors.

                                              noisy miner
                                              mynah bird, mickey
                                              flick-flit dancer

I meet you at your depth and let your breath push blood around my body.
We make an ampersand of arms and legs and you whisper “this is not a safe distance”.

                                              first star
                                              cicada thrum
                                              open-mouthed kiss

I remember thinking that forever might feel like this – eyelid-crepe delicacy (my lips),
ear lobe softness (your teeth).
A cup of tea gone cold beside my shoes.

                                              lights off
                                              snap-blink greyscale
                                              lips to cheek to neck to lips

Somewhere, a casement window bangs.
First I taste blood then the thick blade of storm-metal.
In the kitchen, AM radio makes leaf-litter conversation.

                                              second innings
                                              last session before tea
                                              willow-faced tock

You leave the garden hose running in the afternoon rain.
Yesterday, curled up in the letterbox.
Leatherwood pleasure is folded in a pocket, in a dovecote, in a crowded space.

                                              rain comes
                                              arrhythmic shrapnel
                                              tin-tin-tin

                                                                                            rain goes
                                                                                   downpipe-tick
                                                                                 melaleuca-drip

Territory is suburbia is an atlas of orange-bricked battlelines.
Where cyclone wire fences protect us from nothing.
Unsolicited mail keeps coming.
I can always find your hand in the dark.

                                              cane-toad skin
                                              bitumen bite
                                              evaporation

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Vanessa Page

Poem for a.rawlings

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Graham Nunn

I do not find myself
in shop windows
or the bottom
of a martini glass
but in the slick
mouth of rivers —
the unpolished face
of a wave flecked with foam
before it curls and breaks.

Something of me comes back
in the hunting arc of a Letter-
winged Kite —
the rush to perfection
of a mullet school
escaping the dark
history of carnivores.

When I cast a flattened stone
into the endless blue
it is something to wish upon
and the clouds breaking
tell me where I am —

found in the pull of current
and matching shimmer
of avian eye
no longer fearful
able to sip from its presence —
fall into sky.

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Graham Nunn

Black, Orange, Grey

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Jonathan Hadwen

on my street corner
only the common crow
and hell-bent mynas
invasion hanging from their orange beaks

the black bird counts O’s
(always three)
and guards the fringe of road
the city sky

it is the death father
           fence guard
           traveller
           hater of all things

passing rain brings its own song
for a moment
the birds agree
on silence

the sun casts its net through the fence
the bird on my corner
uncatchable
already its own shadow.

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Jonathan Hadwen

An Absence of Origin

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Julie Beveridge

she lists endemic birds because she cannot take them home must remain satisfied with photos of the lesser sooty-owl’s knowing face midnight hues of the dusky wood swallow prehistoric majesty of emu eye to eye with her camera sorry red-throated diver sorry puffin noble pink footed goose sorry you are migrant children oh harlequin duck oh snow bunting oh artic tern you are from but not of your home collective orphans you nest are watched by the penetrative lens of tourists some who capture your image some who remember seeing you elsewhere another hemisphere an alternative continent a more likely origin

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Julie Beveridge

(untitled)

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Paul Summers

white-browed babbler,
red-necked warbler,
whiteface,

colonial cuckoo,
white-eared monarchist,
black gin leap,

dry-throated spite,
hooded judge,
unmasked confederate,

sanctioned violator,
grog, god & rifle,
abaddon’s firetail,

red-eyed petrol-sniffer,
bearded supremacist,
off-shore process,

palsied apologist,
freckled denier,
muted dissenter,

lesser acknowledged,
lesser broadcast,
the land abounds,

rejoicing
in the comfort
of unchanging songs.

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged Paul Summers

GIBBERBIRD

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Angela Rawlings

In Australia, endemic species are prevalent within the biodiverse state of Queensland. Of approximately 600 bird species identified in Queensland, over 235 species are considered endemic. In Icelandic, endemi means ‘notorious.’ As an ecological term in English, endemic denotes an indigenous species unique to a specified geographic location and not found elsewhere worldwide. GIBBERBIRD traces a foreigner’s first tenuous steps into Queensland’s ornithological lexicon via unorthodox categorization and linguistic sorting methods.

NOTE: The printed version of this poetry suite is typeset in Courier New, since the text requires a fixed-width font in order to uphold the sensitive vertical alignments structuring some of the poems. Every effort has been taken to reproduce it here online.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Posted in 51: GIBBERBIRD | Tagged a.rawlings

Core Explosion

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Suzanne Bellamy

Core Explosion | Suzanne Bellamy | 2010 | acrylic & fabric on canvas | 2 x 2.4m

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Suzanne Bellamy

The Excised Heart

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Jane Skelton

Atlas of Anatomy,1956, in the drawing of the Sterno-costal Surface of the Heart and Great Vessels, in situ, the coronary arteries are red, the cardiac veins, blue. They traverse the heart’s surface, a glutinous grey, a velvet slug.

Blue’s turned again, at the traffic lights – stares straight ahead, fingers tap my leg. Rain drums hard on the hood, does Blue know where she’s going?

Observe this chamber’s entrance: this smooth funnel-shaped wall (infundibulum) below the pulmonary orifice; the rest of the ventricle, is rough with fleshy trabeculae.

Warm wind thick in the city, a large white open tissue blows into her face, a mask. Girl in bright red ballet slippers walks quickly ahead, steps light, a dancer.

A shocking impact first of all more than you could know like an M-80 going off in your shirt pocket it sent me reeling. Same time a feeling of being jack-hammered through my chest. Then, everything in slow motion

In the thick wind, everything became bogged-down – people moved as though through treacle, sticky-slow. Little Asian girl in a pale blue track-suit, hung onto her mother’s hand, in the other, she clutched a witch’s hat, its wiry yellow hair sprayed out in the wind.

Red’s right behind, face anxious above the wheel. She’s following, I say to Blue. Blue drives one-handed, with a casual air.

In the maelstrom, three people stop her and ask the way –
to the money exchange, Kent Street, to the platform of a certain train.

I feel you enter, pushing into the pericardial cul de sac. My heart contracts around your fingers. You tell me what you see: an intricate weaving, a bulbous branching.

In shape and size, the heart is a closed tight fist.

Blue pulls up beneath the bridge – I hear a car door slam. Red gets out, the gun looks huge in her small hand.

My heart’s removed, it’s opened, the thick muscle folded back, held in place by steel pins. I turn to Blue – you knew this would happen, didn’t you?

I’m lying on the floor in that room, thirty seconds post-impact. Every breath a knife turning in my lung. Then, I can no longer see

Red circles the car, swinging the gun every which-way. Raindrops stand out in her hair like jewels.

Red’s voice pierces. “Listen, I’ve got ten love letters for you – three for your feet, seven more for your belly, and spare clips, and I change them pretty quick. So get out!”

“Put that rod up,” growls Blue, “or I’ll bang it out of your fist.”

It was a darn miracle I did not die the doctor later said the bullet missed the vital part it almost ‘curved’ around my heart

There’s a forest within the heart’s chambers – the papillary muscles are the thick and shiny trunks of trees, branching into the chordae tendineae, a tender-looking fragile weaving.

Her eyes hated me. To hell with her, I thought.

The red shoes danced across the city’s map
twinkling in all the places I’d been

street corners, houses, bridges, doorways, bricks I’d run my fingers across,

Sirens wailed distantly; the sound murmured though the windows,
dingos howling out in the hills.

I sat in the car, not moving, wondering why Red hadn’t killed me. None of it made any sense. I watched the rain trickling down the windscreen.

I turned the key in the ignition.

The red shoes were the only things moving, stabbing out the dance in the grainy air.

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Jane Skelton

Happy Place

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Anna Couani

A dark blue fringe of lace above a soft brown wooden surface, the lattice. City lights, not twinkling, twinkling less because they are closer, not further. Blue space between the lattice and the city. Blurring in and zooming out. Seeing it as though with a Photoshop filter, flattening everything. Space becomes 2D as safety glass shatters, as fluid becomes solid, as liquid becomes ice.

6:45am The light from the sunrise lightens everything but at this moment, rays hit a group of houses on the Annandale hill. Suddenly spectacular light on a lit landscape and what it does to the space in between. I shoot and shoot but can’t capture the space. Then slowly another image starts to dominate the shot. In a triangular patch of light on the grass in the foreground, I see my own silhouette like the outline of a clothes peg. Standing, centred in the triangle. The shape yellow-green, diffuse. And the wood chips at the base of the trees, glowing red-orange at its edges.

A big strong guy on YouTube demonstrates his many musical instruments in a special room of his house. This is my happy place, he says. Music is my happy place. Why does a big strong guy need a happy place. Touch of blue. Yes, happy place – playing music, writing, making artwork, video. Why do you sit for hours playing music. Happy place. Not ecstatic, just not miserable, not crushed. A place where the spirit can soar, the mind can roam, and no one will know. A place to be alone.

The shock of the new is not shocking, it’s the shock of the horribly familiar. Like the shock of white polystyrene boxes being carried along the street as you drive past in a car. Horribly white, stained, tainted, suffocating.

Dark dark darkness supersedes the twilight, dark ideas leap from the shadows. Midnight screening/screaming, Formal Wear/malware. The biggest fear: a meteor shower wiping out our databases.

Next photo, the silhouette of you on the motorbike, coming home, smiling, but backlit in the dark garage. And also the headlight shining. The light from the bike and the backlight washes over the shot like a soft mist.

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Anna Couani

Game with the Wind

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Debby Sou Vai Keng

Game with the Wind | Debby Sou Vai Keng | ink on rice paper | 1704x1205mm

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Debby Sou Vai Keng

Bluebottles

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Virginia Shepherd

Deadly flotilla of purposive sails, twisting, spruiking the wind, caught more than a squall, caught a gale, leaving them stranded. Vicious strings of stings, ultramarine webs – spread in the sand, anesthetising nothing. Bloated and swollen, dark pirates deceived in the sea’s silver mirror. Breakers smack sand, whale’s fluke hurls foam – sea’s breathing a false wind

Twisting, manoeuvring, bruises on sand, lethal stings laid flat, nothing to drag, no silver fry entwined. Cnidarians, animated water, trawled Ediacaran seas, garden of sea pens, nodding quills – if there were tentacles, what was the catch? No mouths then, no anus in sight, no teeth, claws or eyes, pulsations only, animated water, clear blue moons, waxing or waning, predictable as water lilies

Stranded in motion, I’m stripped back to bone, my skin is a parchment, hieroglyphic of lines, staring ahead for a change in the weather, at the blueing horizon, around and around, hugging the shoreline, clinging to visage, purple rocks and spume, on this balsa wood raft, both stable and dangerous

Raft turns, follows the current, around to the point, past torn cliffs and back again. Siren sang as she drew me under, and then there’s the other, lashed me firm to this mast. Tell me what’s wrong? If I did it would hurt you. This relationship’s dead, she says, in a hurry, walks gaily through water, waving a hand, disappears into fog

Sea rears up, racing white horses break legs, storm hurling bodies out of the water, great rolling logs, entire trees, a forest it seems, wrenched off at the roots, arms lopped, water lapping, sea smoothed breasts, stripped and skeletal, stranded on sand, sand blasted silver, smoothed dead hands, petrified grin of a petrel, a sand smashed crashed bomber – shattered blue beach-glass, and the bluebottles twisting, inflating – what is this catch that is dry as the sand

Return to the point, the point where I’m turning, here on my raft, which her hands are now clutching, she slides in the seaweed, fingers like starfish, hair streaming sea, eyes of a seal, yet her toehold’s the other, the basking deceiver, booming through fog, won’t drive a wedge, as she picks up the hammer and drives it in – split – ¬my mouths full of sand, and the bluebottles turning, twisting in sand

Rubble of shells all weed and wet feathers, the pirates are stranded, deceived by the sea, what was the catch in those looming pulsations, the strings of stings, a net cast wide, what writhed and was still? Hearts an anemone, crimson and pulsing, shrinking when prodded, dark, dark crimson stuck to a rock, tied to a mast, turning and turning, past the point and back

Here is the earth, here is the sand, each shell discarded, salt stained, sweat stained. Old woman collects shells and says, I will throw them all back, at my age, what’s left? Seen them before, those razors and cowries, cream swirls or chocolate, echinoderm spines – whose eyes will remember, will the wind remember as it gnaws on a shell? All is wound up, poised and watchful

Mind moving matter and the whole world ages, ages beside me, the beach wild no longer but spattered with plastic, the jetsam on ropes, dragging me down, into the current, around and around

Neon flashes and the beach is still writhing, twisting with ribbons of liquid sky. Twin clouds close their lips on a sky of cumquat, sea-winds herd a third cloud, the cumulus, the other, out past the point; it’s gliding, crumpling the ultramarine. Flash – lightning strike – bluebottle cloud, whips of its tentacles, dragging horizon, gone

Pale clouds gone further fractal, reforming, reshaping

Grounds in her coffee cup, her book by the bed

Her shape is a shadow, impressed in white sheets – I smooth it away

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Virginia Shepherd

Gestures in Dreams, No. 1

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Debby Sou Vai Keng

Gestures in Dreams, No. 1| Debby Sou Vai Keng | ink on rice paper | 683x1215mm

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Debby Sou Vai Keng

To a Friend Who also Lost Their Car

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Chris Song Zijiang

Dear friend,

In such a small town our car had actually survived a hundred thousand k’s. The tyres slowly rolled over the erratic streetscape and left it flat on the slightly rugged tarred road. The aggressive pattern had long been ground introspective and smoothed. Our car was towed to a drab auto garage. The engine was jump-started, caught between whimpers and silences, reliving its eloquence of the good old days or worrying about its voiceless prospect. With a trunk of dingy rusty gears, it contemplated the highway of tomorrows. The dents needed the plastic surgery of panel-beating, not to mention new-skin transplants. The frail interior was taken apart, we needed to collect its fragile bones and hunt for substitute tendons. Half of the wires short-circuited. More than half of the oil hoses were jammed. The dyspeptic stomach needed to adjust itself to the impure domestic petrol. Would a mug of black coffee help digest the anxiety outside the operating room? But the vent-pipes belched out pungent bitter black smoke. And the filth of the motor oil, its sour smell spread like a discordant nocturne slowly pouring out. And what was the mess of imported used auto parts on the shelf prophesying? Our past was fragmenting into discrete pieces. The rear-view mirror used to have your approaching image from behind after class; the windshield wiper used to wipe off the heavy-clouded loads on our minds; the headlights used to light up the indistinct journey ahead. But the mechanic handed us a critical condition notice. We understood weighing it for scrap was hardly a fair deal for our feelings. But what would ferry us across the time lag from a death-bed parting to the nostalgic retrospect? How should we deal with the haunting codes on our loved one’s organ donor card?

Yours sincerely,

Your friend
who also lost his car

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Song Zijiang

5th Intergenerational Report – Betterment All Round

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Les Wicks

Got the job zombie, corporal us seniors are the new forever we shuffle through the operating rooms, parliaments our breathmints snipple in the hungry dawn our eating, the fibre, those mellow sauces dance dangerously close to the chilli snuggle down on the salts. We “mature” folk seek holes in the blighted gloom curtain-planners have their one stiff gin then march on back to bed dead tired, engorged or both.

She loves him, the young certainty of a train wreck deep inside his need isn’t fair but is trying like that sun hanging onto an indifferent escarpment mid winter gut his eyes are warm. Will you stay? Marry me?

Under all that grey know the secret garden has rats. Something more free an incontinence of desire still burgles in the grate. The forest is open. Her eyes are not. We all get killed by the ride.

The globe is crowded by those up ahead. This gangrenous queue. We have machines but lack the touch. That dangerous emission from our uncalloused hands. We commute in cannibal majesty to the wall-less, floor-less offices. Parents ate all the furniture ten years ago then headed to the country where supermarkets are polite & they can drive home drunk.

Health scares create jobs that children won’t touch with a barge pole. We wait for robots & “foreigners” to build a future while they fix our bottoms. Still trade, bargain – wouldn’t swap all this for the world even though it is the world it somehow fits these calm old hands.

She’d ring but the phone is estranged. His mortgage comes by for coffee then steals the pot. Jobs are a lie, no more long service leave after 3 weeks retire at 30 sacks of nothing & everything. Weren’t warned as we fretted texting in the womb. But straight as stringent. It somehow gets better. No use complaining, just keeps on raining. We are cut on a rug sign our names in blood. That human curiosity killing a lifetime. Familiar faces. Worn friends like slippers. Truly placed as we discover… this. Another Happy Birthday. Hello teacher, I’m me. Then travel to be you.

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Les Wicks

Time with the Sky #6

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Carol Archer

Time with the Sky #6 | Carol Archer | 2009 | charcoal on paper | 76.5 x 57.5cm

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Carol Archer

Reading Old Diaries

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Antigone Kefala

I was telling Jurgis last night that his bats had arrived again to eat the figs. I said:
‘Your friends have been coming again, the other night, while I was on the terrace, with their floppy wings.’ And he:
‘… airing their arm pits …’ We laughed.
Their wings in the night about the tree, heavy dark cloth flowing through the air, dropping, closing in, gathering themselves …

After dinner we walked through the garden to the sea. Night. The sky full of stars, the Milky Way, past the sea wall the hills full of lighted houses, the sound of a motor, the sea moving silently, waves that advanced as if made of silk, retreating, coming back. A tree that looked like one in Tuscany on postcards, and in the middle of the dark park this lonely telephone booth… lighted up… golden in the night.

Before me longing
and behind me fate
Umar ibu al Farid 1181-1245

More mines in the North. The land viewed from a helicopter, this beautiful, warm red brown expanse that they are hacking at, the skin of the earth that they are constantly cutting away, taking no notice of people, animals, vegetation. But what about the Aboriginal people whose land it would have been. What do the elders around the area think, they probably die of desperation and in silence, only the noise of the miners is heard everywhere, constantly demanding.

On television they were discussing AUGMENTED REALITY. They must have discovered the means to do it.

We went to hear Hilik speaking at the SQUAT, the young were cooking, some came with cooked food, all these squatters – young, vulnerable looking, some amazing hairdos, partly shaven heads, rings through their lips, tattoos.
Squatting upstairs and in some other houses nearby. Some of them artists, radio people, some wanting to be writers. A friendly atmosphere of broken down chairs, cedar staircases painted black, all trying to escape into a freer world.

During Hilik’s talk about sculpture, his sculptures, at one point, near the kitchen some talk, the level rather high, and the young man who had introduced Hilik, calling out:
‘Silence please. An artist is speaking.’
A. rather liked that.

An interview in the Sydney Morning Herald with Bob Gould, of the famous bookshop. He hopes to live till 80. He is 74 now. Quoting him:
‘I am hoping to last for a considerably longer period by the use of considerable ingenuity.’
Maybe we too can use our ingenuity to that effect.

The Birmingham Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle, a disk of 20th Century music. John Adams’ HARMONIUM – a massive composition with a large orchestra and massive choirs, on a poem by Dickinson:

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be our luxury!

Roaming in Eden
Ah! The Sea
Might I but moor – Tonight –
in Thee

Women’s voices from the garden next door and above them a crow putting its spin on the discussion.

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Antigone Kefala

Lilies on the Dam

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Anna Couani

Lilies on the Dam | Anna Couani | 2012 | watercolour and inkjet print on paper

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Anna Couani, Carol Archer

Day in the Mind of the Life in the Garden

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Kit Kelen

four weeks since the night fed ice fed you cube by melting cube

on a certain day of July in 2012 commenced sunshine day’s early on
secret smoke the Bosnian bedsocks toed out in sandals

garbage out fire fixed lit compost gone recycling chimney checked smoke blue sky sunny bathmat dry already 8 32 15 inside 12 out burning something green needs attention only down last week

for a first thing blue persisting the dream remembers me now – I made a waterfall out of milkcrates doesn’t matter which colours there’s some bamboo structure I explain to Max from next door remains of something I built with Halliday I can’t tell what it was anymore certainly not my place but of course it has to be continents drift all night like this I dream the perfect virus wipes everything you look for and following Elpenor to some unnamed town in Hell, he re-enacts the roof tumble which is when everyone’s head comes off and we go to the real underworld torsos left frozen the kids upstairs put rubbish on those clean cut neck plinths and what can you say but how would you like it if someone did that to you when your head was off …
… a night of such toil and scribble it down

see in the blue that old cloud comes for me time to time and up to the dairy for inksports for colour drift for the grist oh pleasantly pleasantly by saliva we wash o pups slush tongue of the place Ganesh hello in passing and shall I so visit the elephant kin? be out in the lemonfall garden be winterchipping show growth for winter is the season of garden to lurk and to linger in sickness and health

they came at you with knives

here’s hoe it has a handle   x     x     x     then up the garden path as recently set in stone
who knows where next appreciate it            and while with the spin of words       fresh yellow
someone with some arse to echo          birds through the tree

so many mail order green things to ground to mulch to water
the fire worries me that plate at the back needs someone stronger than me to shift

best to be under when they come at you best to be talked down those some seconds
by a radio voice and personable best to go gently dreamless into the tug and tear

something between rumble and flutter and the lowing ruts lower reaches as here the wrens
do flit of hommage and then the radio is with us pianos of the competition

gout and bunion fungus toe you can see why ghosts forego feet

four weeks since the ice night womb went praying for rain now the pump is fixed

behind the back dam a shag suns wings         and fans to aid damp rays
only the winter bird does that    weed beguiled    the rendered spell is timber
saw and splutter and axe betide                 so many ways surviving

you see I’m in the dreamt of place subtle of the sight before writing on brown paper
in the one secret day of July available among the notes keyflung strung mr smokey say

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Carol Archer, Kit Kelen

(untitled)

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Kit Kelen

untitled | kit Kelen | 2012 | acrylic and mixed media |40 X 40cm

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Kit Kelen

Angels

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Yota Krili

When I was very young, angels were falling from the sky onto the ground. They were weak with atrophied wings due to a lack of favourable winds. Still they were attracting attention. Children would run after them asking for a free ride to the moon. The poor would run after them demanding they intercede with God to save them from poverty. Their presence was causing suspicion. The police took precautions and set up spy networks. When the angels got used to gravity and found their balance they began to demand absolute freedom for dreaming. Their demands were scrutinised. It was established that they had the wrong dreams and were flying against the wind. They were ordered to comply with Security’s recommendations immediately. Some folded up their wings in despair and tried to live without dreaming. Yet they were still mistrusted and ended up in prison. Those who refused to comply, empowered their wings with guns and took to the mountains to be near God. But God disappeared into the clouds. So the angels became victims of steel vultures and other predators while the country sank into a long-lasting lethargy.

Posted in FALLING ANGELS | Tagged Yota Krili