– for Jane Gibian, with some trepidation

[the] OFFER: 3 cans [of] fly spray [or equivalent led more
or less straight to the] assorted videos
[Unreflexive then, she was more hate, less] Ashbery.
[The] Pregnancy test,
Hurl[ed, spun like a rune ]stone, [a compass, needling the marrow of Panhandle] Park

WA[RRA]NTED [the frail] Road bike [on screaming slopes, the sloe gin
burn: a necessary] (pref[ace to her] working condition)
[The] Plaster [rosette ripe] for mould making,
its green galaxy spreading above hers red below and coming round, she’s

[MIS]TAKEN [the fluting rods of the] old bamboo
blinds [for] St Peter’s [gate, turns back and

thinks the pr]OFFER[ed hand will hold the] Assorted shells
[she wears,] (Forest[all dis]Lodge[ment])

[D]ECEIVED: [shop]ping [while he’s in Pat]pong [she] table[s]

the OFF[END]ER[‘S traits]: half[wit, thick-]set [non-]vintage [money;
seamed like a] golf bag Darling[, not] ton[ight!]
Old Iron Frame [can never keep it] Pian[issim]o;
the neighbours gave up talking years ago.

[Still wasp-]WA[IS]TED: [she envies the] Bulky
knitting machine[s, purling quietly in the depths of their folded mantles]
please (No! [something seasick] Rocks) inside her hearing doctors
Trumpet[ing the miracles of] valve [and c]oil

[not realising until she got home that she’d] TAKEN [the] toy train
[from the burning wreck of the] Alexandria [waiting room].

WANTED: [a] garden [of co]gnom[ina]
[a fat] piggy bank
Beans for beanbag

[MIS]TAKEN: D[e]V[oi]D [spac]es [are not the same as] (empty)

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Your window
at my throat: the vaseline of strawberries

& musk. I rode
your lips lustrous, a smitten

interior, bride’s breath
broke open with salt

silk mixed in the singing
palms of apple trees.

Your hand stripping
the red from my hermit door

it goes down. Narcotic
oils the theatre of eros. All

the hunger a voice holds,
warm vowels in the bread of night, wanting

each maverick piece—all the derelict streets
of leg hair, burlesque music

shining in the temple fibres, maroon
sinews, dark woman

star. Dark
nights of soul.

So slow our cusp
slips opulent hallelujah!

A litany of comets
milking up the sky

There’s a siren but far away, A kitten blows like tumbleweed
down a street otherwise empty. The closed storefronts are vacant
as dreams, and the traffic lights like absence before the raw,
Streaks of wind, It is barely dawn, The wind filled your ears

with sounds, Colour spools from fruits & grains, The incline
runs to golden water, The sky has become Lined in dim light,
Late current buzz, Things from the side of the road, Road bike,
The lake Glitters, The lights go on uptown, At the top of the hill,

it goes down and there’s the store in a small valley. Spotlight
operator, A photographer in Bentleigh East, A pig with a solid
gold nose ring, It Definitely contributed to that, though,
The Word is like the hold of a ship Heemskerck, its timbers.

They Are traces of Surface effects, But Not the real thing.
A subtle mind tends to confuse thought with action.
A rolling cupboard gathers no moths A cup on a table
and it’s just about to be filled. I walk in the garden Hannah,

My tie is kept down with a tie clip, Footprints were black,
You, who call yourself savvy, The keys to your house
tinkle generously in my pocket. Even ordinary words
like the ones you’re reading now will end up as something,

Visits what ends — This is how you jettison a load slowly.
Everything vegetates, this is known. The cycle of nature,
we said, remains unbroken. Tongue stilled, dagger at my throat
Is who you are. You mistook my silence for indifference.

Phrases or sentences from each work in issue 33 were copied out, and then grouped together.
Capital letters introduce new transition from one poem to another. Even after a period.
Only one or two times were two phrase or sentence taken from one poem.

~ In the summer, they are tiny, cotton puffs,
thin with the need to escape …
These winterdreams are heavier
and take longer to sort. ~ unexamined life continuous
digital glitch presenting as analog texture.
In Fremantle we tour the wreck
of the Batavia — preserved immersed timbers tell us
humans are heavier than water, lighter than air— ~
[This line is splendid, till silence
becomes a better listener]

~ An arrowhead of cormorants strikes the horizon. ~
There are traces of coals in the lymph ~
[Someone practising the piano in a room nearby.]
~ Potted metal seedlings mock a germination clock,
Colour spools from fruits & grains, ~
I see cows on these pleasant journeys;
and I hear birds. I lean on my stick.
~ This sentence () the first lines of a poem
… interrupted thought ~ Cricket is a slow game. ~
[In the banana, the child asks] ~ Who is Allen Ginsberg? ~

~ Inside the rain bubble you feel no rain. ~
The earth is smoking its way to a new equilibrium.
The fish are fried, … The Mayans
feel vanquished. ~ before dawn
even flowers are grey
magpies monochrome flautists
pipe in the colours ~ after staring
at the sun all day we agreed~
this sentence should not be used in any poem ~
we agreed we could no longer see each other.

” ~” This is from a different poem
“[ ]” This is from me
“…” I omitted some words here
“()” The order of the phrase is flipped

SIMPLY BY SAILING
IN A NEW DIRECTION
A net of names
drops into the illiterate sea.

MY PRIVATE MISSILE CRISIS 28.03.10
Twice miss the mark by seconds.
Quivering nights await

The mechanic says my engine
Is easily fixed
Ignition falters three times,

Mark the miss
by years

SNOWY STREETS
SILENCE IN SNOWY STREETS
The footprints were black as tarmac,
somehow withholding the light
which otherwise streamed across

LOKI
I feel the leg hairs of ants on my temples
and they knock
and wait for someone to open the door,

but there is no doorman
in strangling suit of blue
or maroon, or some tertiary

before dawn
even flowers
are grey
BEYOND BLACK & WHITE

On good days, I go uphill again;
I walk uphill to get groceries.
At the top of the hill, it goes down,
there is a good place to sit near there.

I walk uphill to get groceries,
half-way, when the ground flattens itself
there is a good place to sit. Near there
I see cows on these pleasant journeys.

Half-way, when the ground flattens itself
I hear birds. I lean on my stick.
I see cows on these pleasant journeys.
There’s the store in a small valley.

I hear birds. I lean on my stick,
though sometimes I have a pot of tea.
There’s the store in a small valley,
I go past the store and then uphill

though, sometimes, I have a pot of tea.
I’d like life to go on for ever.
I go past the store and then uphill.
I walk back uphill and down, home.

I’d like life to go on for ever.
At the top of the hill, it goes down,
I walk back uphill and down, home.
On good days I go uphill again.

sue tames my Brother for his media appearance
my Brother never appears on media as much of
what he knows is acquaintance-historic & accidental.
a good hero in black he never wears black at home
as home is a place was never the broken home
he wanted to come from; only the suits make him sweat
I came to understand his song the “ma ma ma ma ma
de ma ma ma el em land de ma ma ma ma mi madre dice que
la la la la la la sin un hogar negro nunca en Rocky costa nacimos
sumergido en el agua de los demás”
even though I did not speak « no hablo espanol » &
I can’t stand the thought of us growing cold together in Hobart
I never understood my brother’s need to push it push it
in the major key ’”cause I can’t stand no swelter”
we shared mulled breast milk in this swelter that
he mentions; together the chance to go swimming
before appearing on TV, on a stone sucking in salt water
we flee the heat by jumping in, without asking how many times
he has rhymed the reason I’m fleeing with the buzz of our “being”
by which I think he means the method in our
post-translation “up-brining” / sue tames my Brother
when I dive into the ocean as his song surrounds me
like total water and “get off me” but sue has ha tamed him
so he’s no longer rough-like

Pregnancy test,
piggy bank
They bring the noise, and the day grows sturdy.

Don’t cook all your eggs in one biscuit.
You want to save it for some special occasion

Tongue stilled,
I walk through the city, plaiting up dreams.
ever the optimist,
i’m seeking resonance. The Z.

the mind circles its rotunda
twirling until Kingdom Come.

The relation between show & tell

1.

relation between exposure
& strength: poppies touch
it

to the point of no hands

2.

sunflowers not anchored
by old coins

to make
art their invisible

 
3.

insect vision a
nonblind blind

their
treasure buzz

 
4.

celebration of husks
 
5.

the rain-
framed germination
clock

not the seed
instructions

6.

electric grains

soft
spools of
early seedlings
purple with the dark

Paradise is here on a beach of bones a bell fracturing air.
This is no document of barbarism
of clotted blood and glowing flesh
its shine too bright for too long.

It is seeking resonance, the broken things,
falling sunflowers, the fractured pipe, strands of her hair
about to break into ash.

It is the air of atrocity,
a kind of garden like a flat sea cities burn behind us
thin with the need to escape. Maybe it was a mistake,
I can taste the blood still.

1.

Absence makes the heart go

in spite of itself.
I lack.

Dare not to think it.
Tried the word–
slightly ajar— a barbarity
larger than the house entire
holding everything together

Howl————- Howl———- Hello

heavy
with antiques, shoes, carts
clotted blood.

A kind of garden.

2.

The ship needs the sea.
The sea needs rain,
a net of names
solar system

And the sky is held.

When we said bread we meant hunger, soup,
a pot of tea.

This is love, the last
reality.
Wood fungi phosphoresce mixed with sky

thoroughly roasted and unbroken
Paradise is here

You enter the house but as an actor
A photographer in Bentleigh East
Likes technology but LOVES people
You kiss me once and try the word—love.
I lack, unlike the others, a menagerie of identities.
Photographs of air surround me.
Then the dogs cross the road, some alone, others together.
You, who call yourself savvy, defriend me. I can’t penetrate the cats’ in-joke.
Everything vegetates.
I’m seeking resonance.