We live in the suburbs of a concrete paradise,
and this is not a country evening, but an abandoned animal
with eyes all over its gray and brown body.
It blinks, trying to see me better through the knotted, matted hair.
Here, after 9 p.m. the moon is boarded up with yellow planks,
and there is a heavy padlock on the gate to the Milky Way.
A bat gives a squeak: a clock-faced owl
has grabbed the poor one in its claws.
Tiny windows are blind with dirt,
and look like black and white icons with octopuses in them.
Tall weeds grow on the roof, and the porch is
a wooden playpen, two thirds of which are rotten through.
A dog’s barking sinks like a screw bolt in a bottle of
kerosene and purple magic.
Melancholy is like a piece of a polished rail that hangs from a star:
you bang and bang your head against it, but quietly,
without much swishing and swooshing. It’s so good,
it’s so good to live and die
to just live and die quietly,
without actually living or dying,
among the crippled and disappearing wildlife.
Look, here’s a coin, but of what epoch? The dirty tail is unreadable.
What epoch? What empire?
A human life is not much more valuable than a matchbox or a packet of salt.
Burn and cry, slowly, until morning, year after year,
under the shoe-polish-colored sky.
The childhood of the animal has passed here, and here is where it was forgotten.
It was chained to a ship, but both the chain and the ship have turned into dust.
Here is the place where you take off the wig of civilization
from your bald pink brain
and don a nimbus of burs, of sunflowers and sparrows,
and then the animal wakes up. It’s almost blind, it screws up its eyes,
but it recognized you,
and wags the tails of a tractor rut.
It’s dawn with the smell of hay, and motherland, and manure…
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones