Julie Maclean



Willesden Nocturne for a Retired Nurse

When you open your midnight door
 fishing for sound you hear
 the scrape of a snail
 the frame fills with the head of a fox
 your eyes meet 
Do you then plant a stethoscope
 on the throat 
 of a …

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Titicaca as Tourist Conversion

Gas and dust not algorithms explain the birth of a sun not water in rectangular channels of a dead metropolis not stories irrigated by breasts of a thousand goddesses the sacrifice of lama tired stones all that hoo-ha But however …

Posted in 83: MATHEMATICS | Tagged

Landscape / Portrait Dilemma in Taking a Selfie

after John R Neeson—River Bend Installation To create an algorithm that measures beauty—compose, illuminate, expose or fill the birdbath for firetails descending when heat goes out of the sun Use human annotations to classify emotional polarity of each image or …

Posted in 82: LAND | Tagged

Where Fassbinder Hangs His Albatross

Considering Martha (1974), Maria Braun (1979), Lili Marleen (1981), Veronika, Lola, Petra and all. summary she posts secrets to an address in another hemisphere fräulein pins secrets all over her lumberjack shirt she covers her nakedness with secrets stuffs secrets …

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Omniglot

after Mica Still if these walls could talk they would say I like pink & fleshly themes hares with x-rated heads lobes suspended in amniotic fluid ears flat back in fear and thrill a passing prefect or someone on yard …

Posted in 77: EXPLODE | Tagged

Emily Dickinson as an Octopus with a Pre-Death Plan

I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see? — Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground I From the high-care low-life facility where my head lolls in the briny bowl Doctor Death asks what my …

Posted in 74: NO THEME V | Tagged

Review Short: Jennifer Compton’s Now You Shall Know

Jennifer Compton’s ear and predilection for the colloquial is one of the threads linking the poems in this latest collection of apparently autobiographical works. Poems further cohere around irony, sometimes translating as humour.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Review Short: Julie Maclean’s When I saw Jimi, Kiss of the Viking and Kristin Hannaford’s Curio

Poems of England in the 1960s, youthful romanticism, experimentation and love are threaded with a wry understanding of gender relations and choices made, then move to more sober reflections. In ‘Brides that Never Became’, standing in an English church the speaker wonders about a relationship that might have been, had she not ‘looked over the lichened / fence, dry stone wall, / swollen ocean to another land’ (When I saw Jimi, 31). Outside by a river she finds a ‘flimsy tribute to a young Indian couple’ who have died there; their wedding also ‘never became’.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Fed Square Spots Romantic Three Storeys Up

Don’t think I can’t see you thumbing your nose at my reputation Lady-of-the-Tennyson poem You should know I am here trumping Gas and Fuel ugly Lame water feature, flat screen no one loved Volcanoes of bluestone have given me up …

Posted in 62: MELBOURNE | Tagged

Dakota

The first time I saw the building was from the hop-on hop-off bus glimpsing Strawberry Fields as we headed for 9/11 & the Soup Nazi I looked for Yoko with a shopping bag and was disappointed This time I walked …

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Mr. Eno, A Brief for You

Can you do 6 seconds of inspiration, optimism, futurism that is sentimental and emotional? Sincerely              Bill (Microsoft) Sure!              Blah-blah             Da-da-da                                             Brian PS             3.5 seconds okay?

Posted in 50: JACKPOT! | Tagged