sometimes i think of people as looking
like pam brown
sometimes i’m actually thinking of
helen garner
sometimes maggie beer
who i try keep out of mind
as best i can but she
often sneaks in any wayi see a person in the park
they look like my grade prep teacher
she passed away recently and her
stuff – bookshelves, dining chairs –
were put on the nature strip
dad saw them when he was
doing his route
and asked me if i wanted any of iti see someone playing giant jenga
and he looks like atticus finch
he’s kiwi and has tattoos and he
gives me a cider
because i can open his bottlei go to sydney and i see
pam brown wearing an army camouflage jacketluke saw helen garner at la trobe
she was feeling a little faint
i thought i saw helen garner at the zoo once
in the butterfly room
but i looked over to my niece to make sure she was ok
and the vision was all of a sudden gonei see jacky from high school on the train
she smiles at me
she’s wearing a black dress
thinking about abstract expressionismsometimes i see industrial zoning
and i think of javant biarujia
i think of peter bakowski’s famous
beret…………………
on the highest shelf at
hill of content bookshop, shimmering
then i feel that if people, generally, looked more
like ania walwicz
our cities would be more beautiful
in an interesting wayi’m going to the movies
and i see some guy who looks like
georg grosz
and i get to worrying
he looks like a beware of the dog signon the bike path i think i see warren whitney
miss that guy, what a good face
remember him wearing a free palestine
t shirt and shorts
bashing the white board with some new ideasometimes i think of marty hiatt as
looking like a seal
other times as looking like a
disney cartoon princei like to think of pam brown
working as a postie in some golden year
wearing hi vis
picture this in melbourne because
i’m a narcissisti think of pam brown going to school in america
and meeting eileen myles
they probably wore
normal things
t shirts, trousersi think of writers not as working class
but as middle class
without the steady money
at least i think i see things this way
my ideal job is working at a personal computer
in a giant, bustling room of people
and instead of doing my work
i’m writing poemsi imagine the working class not
as you say
in offices, but in factories
pate factories to be precise
i imagine shakespeare
wearing something irrelevant
to match his plays
as he does the visiting rounds like a stormhe’s no longer even into those ancient stories
even in a form that is possible to understand
by normal people
and we don’t care who’s putting it on!if you give shakespeare to a pate factory
say, in narre warren
they will probably churn it into the mix
along with the chicken livers and the peppercorns
i think of pate as kind of like d h lawrencesometimes i think of people
as looking like d h lawrence
when i’m walking up a hill on some
generic holiday
and they do not wave or flag me down
and i run on
- 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