CORDITE POETRY REVIEW ISSN 1328-2107 ISSUE 33: CREATIVE COMMONS FULL TEXT OF POEMS GUEST POETRY EDITOR: ALISON CROGGON MANAGING EDITOR: DAVID PRATER COVER IMAGE: FORTNER ANDERSON THIS COMPILATION PRODUCED JULY 2010 ABOUT THIS ISSUE The theme for Cordite's 33rd issue is 'Creative Commons'. In one way, we’re looking back on our 11th issue, Copyleft, which dealt with issues of sampling, copyright, digital editions and so on, albeit in a very limited way. But more generally, it's a chance for us to ask some pertinent questions about poetry in the digital world. Information wants to be free, right? With this issue, for the first time, we will be publishing successful contributors' works under a creative commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike) license, meaning that you are free to remix these works. We will also publish a selection of remixes once the issue has gone online. Please visit the Cordite website to find further details of how to submit your remix: http://www.cordite.org.au CONTENTS SIMPLY BY SAILING IN A NEW DIRECTION MY PRIVATE MISSILE CRISIS YOU SAW ME FIRST ISABELLA SCENES FROM ORBITAL BRIDES: INFINITE INTERIORS FLARFING GINSBERG LESSONS IN IDEATIONAL/PROPOSITIONAL MEANING THEORIES GARDEN PIECE DOPPELGANGER THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE ZANE TAKES A BULLET IN THE CHEST CAN-AM SERIES POEMS FOR IVOR CUTLER # 3 WANTED, TAKEN ONE WORD, D’ELFIN CONTENDERS PROVERBIALS GENE POOL BEAUTIFUL JUST LEXICONS QUIETLY OFF-KEY SUELTAME ROCKY COAST SMELTER INADEQUATE STOVETOP KERB SIDE COLLECTION APROPOS THE WALKER WHEN I MET YOU IN THE HALL DOGS IN SPACE WAYS OF THE MIND AS SUBJECT SILENCE IN SNOWY STREETS THE TIE CLIP [SAMPLING HEIDEGGER] LOKI LITANY PARTICULUNAR BEYOND BLACK & WHITE SIMPLY BY SAILING IN A NEW DIRECTION for Arjen Duinker Christ Child with Whirligig (Bosch) twirling until Kingdom Come. The Word is like the hold of a ship: Heemskerck, its timbers shivering in a spring tide, heavy with antiques from the New World. * Batavia – a rainstorm drowns out talk of borders, where fungi phosphoresce for our Lord. Horses lose their shoes, carts capsize as we ford the Almighty’s deeper meaning. Wood holds onto the nail’s faith, wood splinters on the nail’s dogma. Paradise is here, between the thighs of a slave, the taste of sea mixed with sky… * Existence is useless unless you are a hammer – still you need someone to pick you up. The hammer ignores the nail – they both rust but not equally because nothing is equal; they are still becoming nothing. * Absence makes the heart go nowhere. Near the clearing, never in. To revere is to fear the empty when all’s said and undone. * The hand that grabs at air vanishes. A net of names drops into the illiterate sea. The ambition of blood to overcome ambition. An arrowhead of cormorants strikes the horizon. The hand that grabs at water evaporates. * The waves are available to all. They do not discriminate. The king also goes under for the third time, three being the number of the unseen One who wills but will not intervene – even to direct the dove. * But a wing must scan the air, counting time. And the sky is held accountable by the wing, as the sailor and the wave beat one another. * The ship needs the sea. The sea does not need the ship. The bird needs the mast. The mast does not need the bird. * Atlantic, rain on the palm of your hand, salt in the crease of your thighs. Pacific, the palm of your hand salty in the crease of your thighs. Rain. * Father is away on business, Mother late. The birds are not of this world, you hear them when you stop listening. Every ship that ever set misread the sextant, steered beyond the known, the named, making landfall on a beach of bones. * The solar system is a bangle on the ankle of a god. Shells inlaid on its rim, our hopes shine for half the time, time being illusory yet divisible. What will we find, losing our lives to endow museums? Provenance unknown. We thought of ambition as our rudder, it is an anchor that drags… * The Word was not ready yet the devil was a tailor double-stitching Dutch sails with Cain’s sinews. A dove is not a god but a dove with a sprig is godly. The explorer draws his chart on water, concentric circle after circle… In the centre his ship of bones. * To port the sign of the fish rather than fish. A wreck becoming coral, the cross on all fours. * What was horizon presses blood from the genitals. This is love, the last commandment: the tongue of a bell fracturing air. There the promissory note of the choir, the cry of the godforsaken gull swooping on a fish-head left in the wake of a canoe. * The sea monster was Appetite: it annexes common from sense, stripping prayers then oaths from master and mate – they go down before the roaring lord of savages, hermit crabs, and vitrines. Heads cracked open, we hold the Great Southern Land. * There’s a lot of space left. We claim that space in the name of. We use the voice of a futures broker – it is an anachronism and we own that anachronism. When we said bread we meant hunger. When we heard men we thought women. When it grew dark we cried Hallelujah! the night is ours. Soon the stars will be beneath us. MY PRIVATE MISSILE CRISIS 28.03.10 My private missile crisis Ignition falters once Twice miss the mark by seconds. Tack my womb to the cross, Empty my egg baskets, Soon I will not need them. A pig with a solid gold nose ring, Jesus, bless me with your humility My snout is itching. Humiliation becomes me Since before birth, I’ve picked my nose with a crucifix Lord lays down his punishment And now my faulty rocket can’t Get off the ground I’ll pay for it in spades, Repent my nose-picking sins, Bear this propeller Splintery lips fire Static sparks into my body Still I stall the stuttering engine Here the Kings of Israel sat To judge their people. Quivering nights await It eludes me, Like mucous on the corner of my iris I can’t focus on The mechanic says my engine Is easily fixed Soon, he tells me How certain your promise is, Of combustive exaltation, Til my grave ices over My private missile crisis, Ignition falters three times, Mark the miss by years YOU SAW ME FIRST ISABELLA You saw me first, Isabella, passing beneath your window. Tongue stilled, dagger at my throat. You mistook my silence for indifference. I smiled in spite of myself. The wind filled your ears with sounds you alone could hear. Lorenzo. My name travelled like a curse from your lips. From your lips I rode into a forest quiet for the slaughter. Later, in the glade, we met again. In the shade of a poison oak – you above, I below – we spoke of gold and wasted hours (beneath the wasted stars among the wasted flowers). Your black nails dripped with silt. My black mouth smiled in spite of itself. You kissed me once and tried the word – love. Then quickly buried me like a guilt. Line ‘into a forest quiet for the slaughter’ from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron SCENES FROM ORBITAL BRIDES: INFINITE INTERIORS A red door larger than the house entire, slightly ajar; hand upon the door, a corridor not attached to the frame. Interior. You enter the house but as an actor. Before you in the grey corridor three windows, brass picture frames. You hear a thumping above. The ceiling bends in, elastic, you turn to a mirror – it windows, orange wallpaper, wood-floor under track lighting. A dune collapses from a cinema screen on which plays Nathan’s child. Fine hair streaks out with wild laughter. The incline runs to golden water, surf at a receding fifteen degrees; a fine interplay of sensations as the frame becomes a mirror. The stranger pictured there looks back toward camera, camera looks down a corridor disappearing in red doors ajar. Camera swings back, the stranger stands further down transfixed before another frame – the film slips a spool, chukkachukkachukka-chuk-chuk-chuk ... cinema canvas. Scratching behind it. FLARFING GINSBERG Allen Ginsberg Academic articles, collected poems Cancer-related heart attack, intelligent bridge-player The most reliable source: corduroy, synthetic biology, rare foot Howl, Howl, Hello, my name is blog! Whitman, Ginsberg, Washington DC Zombie Hamster obscenity trial Longtime spokesperson Forthrightly gay, freedom fighter, free collection, free download, listen free Prophetic American bard, Convocation of Unitarian ministers, Renaissance or die Elected king of the May by Czech students Likes technology but LOVES people Whitman, Wichita, Journalist Pony Stable, Template Optimiser, Independent biopic Join Facebook to start connecting with Allen Ginsberg Who is Allen Ginsberg? I was briefly in graduate school, Film School reject, spotlight operator, A photographer in Bentleigh East The leading boardroom-level advisor to the Accounts Receivable Management Industry (ARM) AcRonyM The only person in the world who wears a nametag 24-7-365 Overestimate the importance ‘That’s not an accurate quotation’ LESSONS IN IDEATIONAL/PROPOSITIONAL MEANING THEORIES (A POEM FOR M.A.) That is that though the is is the that though. That is the, though that is though, the is that, the and though though though is that. Is that that and that? That though is the The. The is the that and that and that though the though is though. But is though that or that or the? Or The the? That is that and that is not that though that is not that that though that is not the that. That is that the or though though though is that or the. That is not that that, though the is that that or that the that. The though is not the not – Is not that the though is? But though is not that is though though is not that that. That is that, or the and that and that though is The the, though The the is that, not that, and though and though and though. The the is the the and that; That is that not that but that and that; and though though is though, though is though, not that. DOPPELGANGER I lack, unlike the others, a menagerie of identities (multiple hes who co- exist within the same body: the sack of clotted blood and glowing flesh and gangly bones that one calls home); there simply are two mes: Pieta, marble statue terrified of movement, but with a glare as ghastly as Medusa’s; and the monstrous colossus, omnipotent as that God of Plagues and Chaos, and master of the bold strip tease. Distinct as Death and Life they’ll never meet. GARDEN PIECE This is not a document of barbarism, we said                                                                    but the weather was fine       and the girls/women we in swimsuit ads                                                                        or at least we thought       they were, but from our position on the dirty                                                                        parterre, really all       that could be seen were the fibrous wires                                                                        holding everything together.           Those fibrous wires, they said, are surely but                                                                        chainlinks is a larger       fence, but the goods, tainted as they were, couldn’t be                                                                        sold, so we didn’t reply.       A new start, really, was all we were looking for                                                                        and our study of homiletics       definitely contributed to that, though the inbreaking                                                                        remained unbroken.           So what, you might say, as they did, there’s nothing                                                                        new under the sun,       which, anyway, was gone from its hegemonic position.                                                                        Meanwhile, on the parterre,       the tulips were thoroughly roasted. Odoriferous, we                                                                        laughed and held our noses.       Everything vegetates, this is known. The cycle of nature, we said, remains unbroken.   THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE after Twombly after Turner 1 Falling down in triplets the ships shifted and shook primed but nothing else This is how you jettison a load slowly but with forgiveness 2 To be built for fighting is just another way of being built for death and all vision of you will be blurred because death is 3 You are linked only to yourself and you must know (because I can see) that your decomposition is who you are ZANE TAKES A BULLET IN THE CHEST there is blood but not a lot there is pain but not a lot there is hope but not a lot there are cries but not many there is a life but only short there is truth but only one there’s a fear but not a hate there’s a siren but far away there’s a gun but not mine there’s a man but not him there is another shot but not at me there is death as you’d expect there is an end but not the death there is me there is him there is her this is it CAN-AM SERIES for CAS Chlorine chances taken cribside Bast-thistle rehearse sable her since startle A creel of stars or starts Begin marine-smitten and blind static alba, finial, estuary his rheumatic There are traces of coals in the lymph Serum against the astrolabe Scarlatti played his cement rib instead of her Inclement, linear narcotic, terse collide Colic the stars on inert cables Breath entrained on babel carnival brim POEMS FOR IVOR CUTLER # 3 I walk uphill to get groceries. At the top of the hill, it goes down and there’s the store in a small valley. Then I walk back uphill and down, home; though, sometimes, I have a pot of tea half-way, when the ground flattens itself. I see cows on these pleasant journeys; and I hear birds. I lean on my stick. I’d like life to go on for ever as long as it doesn’t change too much or get busy or run out of tea. On good days, I go uphill again, leaving my things to eat behind me. I go past the store and then uphill then downhill until the road turns left. There is a good place to sit near there. WANTED, TAKEN OFFER: 3 cans fly spray assorted videos Ashbury Pregnancy test, Hurlstone Park WANTED: Road bike (pref. working condition) Plaster for mould making TAKEN: old bamboo blinds St Peters OFFER: Assorted shells (Forest Lodge) RECEIVED: ping pong table OFFER: half set vintage golf bag Darlington Old Iron Frame Piano WANTED: Bulky knitting machine please (North Rocks) Trumpet valve oil TAKEN: toy train Alexandria WANTED: garden gnome piggy bank Beans for beanbag TAKEN: DVD cases (empty) ONE WORD, D’ELFIN Where families go to be families, unseen and unseeing The photograph has all of its teeth, it’s an elf, a brief elf. The sun makes pale the over-constructed nose, the wispy hints of vanishings. It’s an age trap where you look back and say where did that animal go? Its tendrilous aspirations and the extra inch of lip. We pay for it now. A strange forest goes up and up and people have not made it to themselves even after all that running. The sky has become a pin-prick through the musk residing over buried enchantments, photographs of air and the creatures that used to be in them. CONTENDERS   we sit lined in dim light our fists bloodied from the fight our hearts on fire our failure smoking still PROVERBIALS You wax my back and I’ll wax yours. An itch in thine saves mine. As the twig is split so the toothpick’s kindling. A rolling cupboard gathers no moths. Don’t cook all your eggs in one biscuit. Let not the black kettle call the white tea pot hot. Don’t kill the goose that plays the golden shower. The proof of the prude is in the beating. Out of sight, never mindless. Fine feathers make fine feather dusters. Clothes maketh the bed. May as well be hung for a sheep as for a coat hanger. He who lives by the fjord dies by the f’cliche. Consummatum zest - the soup is finished. GENE POOL BEAUTIFUL The word's been bounced about in gas stations as you're pumping way, the spectral drops on the pavement. You resent it there, that serpent. The word's been bellowed out a bar door flooding with night after a tab's been left behind. Who's going to pay it now? Beautiful. Just beautiful. You look away from its flag in your head, the black stocking flexing out of a car, a gold chain whipping by, Christmas lights in April, surface effects, not the real thing. You want to save it for some special occasion like the time you had to close the clinic door on the girl looking in your eyes for hope, but then you would not dare to think it. JUST LEXICONS —George Oppen A zero, a nothing, a barbarity— Cars on the highway filled with speech, The darkness of trees. The extreme from up-state (Grateful for a breeze): He who will not work shall not eat. It is the air of atrocity, A kind of garden like a flat Sea. My daughter, my _______, What can I say? Myth of the blaze, myself I sing: Now we do most of the killing. Of such deadly ancestry, Preceded by mounted police, Quotations, the resistance, Survival: Infantry. Tell the beads of chromosomes (Like a rosary): Ultimately, the air Visits what ends— You are the last, The Z. QUIETLY OFF-KEY —Donald Justice A song went looking for light, But that is another story. Cities burn behind us, the lake Glitters: Do not bother with odes, My son, an elegy is preparing itself For the suicides of 196__. The grandfathers holding this poem— It was his story, it would always be His story: June 13, 1933— Know (like a deserted beach, A map of love, nostalgia) one May depend on these old cemeteries. The poet: re: the question of Self-portrait as still-life, The classic landscapes of dreams, Unflushed urinals, & his voice Through the smoke & dull flames Of purgatory… When the lights go on uptown, X, you would not recognize me. SUELTAME ROCKY COAST SMELTER sueltame hermana media hermana nada mas que un acquaintance an accident historic agujero negro never negro never the home place never the broken home platitudes only the sucios make you sweat second hand I came to understand la ley de la land la la la la la la mama tierra? la la la la la la no home in Bodalla can’t stand Temuco too cold in Hobart Puerto Montt push it push it I never understood la ley ’cause I couldn’t stand the swelter the molten breast milk swelter pechugas de piedra sucking on salt water inky heart saltos huyendo how many times has art rhymed with corazón the reason I’m fleeing is the buzz of an interstitial buzzing salty smelters is when I dive into the ocean cuando escucho las fantasmas sumergiéndose otra vez en las aguas it surrounds me like your land surrounds you INADEQUATE STOVETOP i lap up macadamia fuzz in a middle aged stroll of the ‘nature’. espying a roof rack means change the world instead, or try on sunglasses ingested by a seven-eleven, or read emily bitto’s poem & feign a partner’s formal awareness. hum, like mythic solitary couples sparse atop ‘fauna’. anyway you’re bubbly. & less lcd in spirit becalmed in those spurts. as spun wool wet suited & vast they find nothing in my head no feeling no tartan gift wrapping (though such curling patterns fuck around in dreams, wax semi-porous opinion). a vaseline moment & a ‘perfect’ sticker affixed to my clothes. all hot, lovely, or so my jaw speculates. over to gorgon youths barraging the heads. girls venture further & nakeder to peruse the bluster. a blyton shark net hole looses seals & one lone stingray, a smoker, a maverick snorkeler, is fictional. living bends my spine in & out of that stuporific posture, a useful talking point. we meandered into the joust talk like sand djinns, far-limited by day… now bleached into a pathetic fade of umber, as a footnote of who will hold the mantle? years ahead in what might be glum future, else bank queues he stops to borrow all your stuff – hat flippers coat wallet – with me a carefree grin they can only breed, then locks under the spume with definite activity / mindful of things i disappear. awful profundity in the wind. the huntsman’s legs extended with a passing thunderhead. our party has become a spider, grappling to predict equal change in feeding ritual. lime infused tea vomits a vapour of muzak to our traversal of polarization of digital means – to move / to get static / to tape ‘obstinate’ & bend it through a low-pass filter, to imagine only the background level subject matter ever: irony as a head slap / falling from a car after. you’re a tool. you could enter into more details. then, there. an academic reference to richard gere’s rehearsed lines seems slight, in hindsight. i discovered the tomes on everything (passing forest, firetrails named after his grave, packets of ‘big things’ & the website to back you up) but everyone else is incapable of feeling the same awkward. in houses bereft of for sale signs, boats parked round the side, we’ll straggle. down a murderous side-path not obvious to light. here’s a picnic bench, a council bin. streaks of wind across some dwindle of bay. i’m seeking resonance. rub cream into the stings, & elsewhere, all quarters pleasurable. the bream flounders under his stern gaze. no worries blown across, telegraphed as a sentence, whole. KERB SIDE COLLECTION Take the broken things from the side of the road the rotted cedar setting the tippling tables the cathode ray tv the rusted chair the torn fabric the fallen angels the terracotta pots. Take the broken things from this derelict garden the stumps of trees the leaking pond the crushed coral reef the trembling crust the pulsing core the fractured pipe the spent bromeliads. Take the broken things from inside your coat the old fountain pen the stitched in quote the pieces of glass the vow of love the crumbled shell the torn photograph the strands of her hair. Take the broken things from the open tomb the father the son the desecrated host the unwrapped shroud the spilt wine the children the priests. Take the broken things from this punctured can the first lines of a poem the interrupted thought the space between stanzas the parts of speech the vowels the consonants. This sentence. APROPOS The relation between show & tell show the seed tell the chair. there were no poppies but there was beeswax, there were no forums save the framed rain, The lead shone purple. Husks sprouted underneath, Not yellow, Dry brown. The dried dead, invited entered grey house, Falling sunflowers, Walked drowned. Potted metal seedlings mock a germination clock, Colour spools from fruits & grains, Alone in their coffins with the dark, Soft plants not electric but words, hit floor. The light but largely not light hits the floor. Stuck Between families & strangers making a visible Celebration. * * * THE INVISIBLE ACCOMPANIES us up & downstairs, hear the record touch it. Leaves of cocoa vision & concept anchored by insect sound. Instructions helpful to the point of irritating nonblind blind. I Scooped that was my involvement left right Both. * * * HIS STRENGTH AND exposure in the early, in his late current buzz. Old coins make treasure spotted hands make art THE WALKER I walk through the city, plaiting up dreams. They are best found at night, steaming on the road, where they have been tossed out car windows or flattened from the long walks home. I straighten the dreams, pull the colours together, stretch the long held dreams out to see how they need mending. In the summer, they are tiny, cotton puffs, thin with the need to escape. They fall out flyscreen doors, float through mesh, gather in apple trees and fall under the strawberry plants. In the winter, nightmares rush out, falling over themselves, yellow, green and blue. These winterdreams are heavier and take longer to sort. The long-haired girl sighs as she walks. Her dreams are complicated and will turn into pretty plaits– multicoloured, lustrous. Their shine is too bright for too long and after a time. I decide I need to go inside, to the cupboard. I search the leftovers: five minutes outside, clean sheets and fresh bread, bare feet on the beach, and slip them into the plait for a girl who can see all of her future: endless, beautiful, exact. I plait her dreams, brush the silky pattern, feel the knot. WHEN I MET YOU IN THE HALL When I met you in the hall you were all inclement weather on a stony coast and you held my hand as though we were more than we could be: preppy kids in a pop-song duet retrofitting dignifying deniable half-truths at the end of the late-night double-feature picture show. We met again before your disability support pension days, when I was a bright-eyed ingenue at the agency after-party, coked-up, with the hands of the randy partner (a known pederast and pants man—and oh does he come to a sticky end) all over me. He had character not presence—it wasn't a failing. How I loved you then but find now the 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— blank reflections pale as faded decals slipped from an astrolabe’s display case. DOGS IN SPACE     Somewhere in Patagonia, an old man carries an axe, and 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 wind. It is barely dawn. At the bus stop, near a corner shop with peeling skin, the dogs begin to arrive, one by one, some greeting each other, silently, others standing or sitting alone. There is a dog with one eye, and another with three legs perched on the doorway ledge of the corner store, its windows boarded as if there was something terrible. Then comes an old woman with a wooden cart, one wheel shrieking. When she stops, she props the lid of her cart ajar for viewing. Next, there are the strangers, their backpacks stuffed with sleep. Some of the passengers arrive on foot, others in taxis. They bring the noise, and the day grows sturdy. The people are people. The dogs are dogs. The bus arrives like market day. And departs like evening. The dogs mill like litter in its lee, and the old woman closes the lid of her wagon against the wind. Then the dogs cross the road, some alone, others together, to the lonely panic of the pedestrian lights.              WAYS OF THE MIND AS SUBJECT 46 light wanes in Trinidad; the red ibises return; the mind loses its wager with disbelief 47 light heartedly the mind conceived the cello without frets 48 for its own security the mind forged the food chain 49 the mind serves as windlass to its weighty thoughts 50 the congenial mind offers its best vintage, breaks its thoughtful bread 51 birth grants equality by right - nurturing minds ripen its fruits 52 the mind, relatively young, knows to discount the arrogance of the Age of Reason 53 the mind convinces best in the vernacular if the speaker is interested 54 ever the optimist, the mind considers itself half full 55 if the mind takes a spin it always comes back dizzy 56 a subtle mind tends to confuse thought with action 57 alone in the Pantheon the mind circles its rotunda only to pause at inner peace 58 during a melodic phase the mind turns a musical phrase 59 the mind confuses addresses while searching its old neighborhoods 60 when minds oppose, is law sovereign without enlightened police? SILENCE IN SNOWY STREETS The footprints were black as tarmac, somehow withholding the light which otherwise streamed across the intersection of snowy streets: perhaps they had captured her soul as she walked from the basilica over to the poet’s monument and then to the small chapel where she would sing a hosanna: but all I could hear was silence. THE TIE CLIP [SAMPLING HEIDEGGER when I walk in the garden my tie is kept down with a tie clip Being Becoming Care Angst Being Towards Death Un-Home The Mob Babble Uncanny Mood Voiding Void Thrown-ness Speaking Situation The Clearing Being Ahead of Yourself Falling Existence Letting-Be Truth Forgetting Being Hannah Arendt Authenticity Decision Resolve when I walk in the garden my tie is kept down The National Socialist Revolution brings a complete revolution to our German existence Doctrine and ideas shall no longer govern your existence when I walk in the garden my tie The Führer himself and only he is the current and future reality of Germany and his word is your law If you see a light in my office at exactly 9 pm you can come We first understand the glory and the greatness of the Hitler revolution when we carry implanted deep within us this reflection Everything that is great is in the midst of the storm when I walk in the garden Hannah Now there is a sharp battle to be fought in the spirit of National Socialism which must not stifle on account of humanistic Christian notions that hold us down by their imprecision at exactly 9 pm you can come Study must once again become a gamble with no protection for the cowardly Whoever does not survive the fight will be left to lie on the field of battle when I walk in Hannah The new courage must become accustomed to constancy for according to the leaders the battle will go on for a long time It will be fought with all the strength of the new Reich which Chancellor Hitler will bring to reality with a tie clip It must be fought by a hard race of men Hannah who take no thought for themselves and who live constantly under ordeal ever striving toward their goal like a female Jewish palindrome where monologue becomes dialogue Being & Time lose their tie clip [Heidegger quotes from: M. Heidegger, German Existentialism. Translated and with introduction by D. D. Runes, New York: The Wisdom Library Division of Philosophical Library Inc. 1965 (direct quotes from Heidegger) The tie clip and ‘If you see a light…’ from: W. Honan, ‘Hannah Arendt’s love with the perfect Nazi’, Sydney Morning Herald 11/11/1995] LOKI I am more empty than something sucked dry by a man lost thirty days in a desert and now found 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 instead there’s a cup on a table and it’s just about to be filled, but not until the little man gets back with the paper and it seems, by the look of the spider webs that he left weeks ago and was in quite a hurry, his hat still on a hallway peg I’m still looking for him, his brain is valuable; the way he’d read his own headlines before acting out the best bits of movies with woodchips in the flower pots or lie and say he had Peter Seller’s copy of In the Mood or that one of his ancestors slept beneath Cadair Idris and went mad and ate chicken feathers all year until he wasted away. LITANY O well-wishers of the underground, defriend me. I played with the singularity of time, hounded by the noises my mother made in my ear when I was an infant, pressed close to death. Once upon a time a child caressed by many like a fiddle grew up into a sullen behemoth. It’s easy to insert my hand right through the maws of the classic. There, in that ninth dimension, stand the puttering ghosts, about to break up into ash at the minutest detonation of anger. Even Picasso had his mystery. We know these cars, blinded by their speed pattern, have their noses turned inward. What is that sound of thunder? I imagine Oxford, Mississippi in the Faulkner days, under a green shadow of not-knowingness so deep even the insects had to advance cautiously. The moon is heating up. O my brothers and sisters who believe in the myth of Woodstock, why won’t you let us hear if you have a singing voice? The news, when it fits the gospels, I trust. Where do we go after we have paid the toll? I am passionate about the size and height of my desk, but not so much the coloring. I become blind between ten and two every day. The cats have their conference, and it is a most pleasant barter. The child who saw me with one eye, she is named after her father’s dead father. Windows are conspiring in the assassination, so are the doors, the garbage chutes, the laundry room’s drainage pipes, all the oak pollen falling like a nuisance rain. Come, let us smuggle eros past grandfatherly canons. Maybe it was a mistake to be born. Maybe I am the reincarnation of Jesus—or Napoleon. Maybe I was the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. I can taste the blood still. My father sacrificed me when I was still swaddled, wanting no piece of me, if I wouldn’t have the fortitude of Isaac. So we hid in the Amazon. Inside the rain bubble you feel no rain. The earth is smoking its way to a new equilibrium. The fish are fried, and the corn tastes of powder. The Mayans feel vanquished. Cricket is a slow game. So slow you have time to become self-conscious on the field. I call myself a novelist. I have punctured many a character’s fatuous ego. The keys to your house tinkle generously in my pocket, but I cannot make up my mind to exit the endless corridor, where I meet up with Cocteau’s demon lovers and greet them from the twenty-first century, a period that in their worst dreams they knew was bound to come one day. It’s just that once it happens no one knows how to phrase it to preserve their innocence. You, who call yourself savvy, defriend me. I can’t penetrate the cats’ in-joke. PARTICULUNAR * he is convinced his bullet points are new moons * even today when people use the term ‘narrative arc’ Noah leans forward * not belonging to anything in this world this world belongs to anything * i cut myself and you bleed * he can’t even walk into an empty room without saying sorry * this sentence should not be used in any poem * even the tallest poet will fall short of this line * how could i walk into a room and not see i was there * even if i knew what a corner was what would i do with it * attention spanned as small as self * it was philosophers vs art theorists in the eyeball & spoon race * is this jug a pour example of itself * he said clocks are just drink coasters for the gods * hate inspires great architecture but makes lousy coffee * if we understood language we’d leave it on the wall like a fire extinguisher * in every play the commas get the best parts * only a stone’s throw away the stone throws itself away * on the table a pair of ears held together with a paperclip * now that politics is just a farmer’s market for lies * even ordinary words like the ones you’re reading now will end up as something * discovering the axis of the world is a needle she threads her life through it * standing at one end with a stopwatch she times my swim through the mirror * inside your throat i make your breath produce its passport * my bones exit and stack themselves neatly so i can collapse in peace * this sentence should be used in every poem * after staring at the sun all day we agreed we could no longer see each other * i sleep with your mouth open * if i tell you where we are we won’t be there anymore * convinced his bullet points are new moons he makes lists to avoid narrative BEYOND BLACK & WHITE before dawn even flowers are grey till magpies, monochrome flautists, pipe in the colours CONTRIBUTORS DAVID HOWARD ALEX FLOOD BELLA LI DANIEL EAST PENELOPE AIRA DAVID JEFFERY ANNE GORRICK LAWRENCE UPTON JANE GIBIAN MARIA ZAJKOWSKI JOHN GRAHAM MARK O’FLYNN DOUG COX SEBASTIAN GURCIULLO STUART COOKE TIM HEFFERNAN MICHAEL FARRELL SUSAM MCMICHAEL MARIA TAKOLANDER KEITH MOUL EDWARD REILLY PETER LACH-NEWINSKY ASHLEY CAPES NATHAN SHEPHERDSON ROB WALKER ANTHONY DIMATTEO ANIS SHIVANI STUART BARNES DEREK MOTION PASCALLE BURTON ADRIAN WIGGINS CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE: ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 3.0 AUSTRALIA YOU ARE FREE: * TO SHARE — TO COPY, DISTRIBUTE AND TRANSMIT THE WORK * TO REMIX — TO ADAPT THE WORK UNDER THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS: *ATTRIBUTION — YOU MUST ATTRIBUTE THE WORK IN THE MANNER SPECIFIED BY THE AUTHOR OR LICENSOR (BUT NOT IN ANY WAY THAT SUGGESTS THAT THEY ENDORSE YOU OR YOUR USE OF THE WORK). * NONCOMMERCIAL — YOU MAY NOT USE THIS WORK FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES. * SHARE ALIKE — IF YOU ALTER, TRANSFORM, OR BUILD UPON THIS WORK, YOU MAY DISTRIBUTE THE RESULTING WORK ONLY UNDER THE SAME OR SIMILAR LICENSE TO THIS ONE. WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT: * WAIVER — ANY OF THE ABOVE CONDITIONS CAN BE WAIVED IF YOU GET PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER. * PUBLIC DOMAIN — WHERE THE WORK OR ANY OF ITS ELEMENTS IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, THAT STATUS IS IN NO WAY AFFECTED BY THE LICENSE. * OTHER RIGHTS — IN NO WAY ARE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING RIGHTS AFFECTED BY THE LICENSE: O YOUR FAIR DEALING OR FAIR USE RIGHTS, OR OTHER APPLICABLE COPYRIGHT EXCEPTIONS AND LIMITATIONS; O THE AUTHOR'S MORAL RIGHTS; O RIGHTS OTHER PERSONS MAY HAVE EITHER IN THE WORK ITSELF OR IN HOW THE WORK IS USED, SUCH AS PUBLICITY OR PRIVACY RIGHTS. * NOTICE — FOR ANY REUSE OR DISTRIBUTION, YOU MUST MAKE CLEAR TO OTHERS THE LICENSE TERMS OF THIS WORK. THE BEST WAY TO DO THIS IS WITH A LINK TO THE CORDITE WEBSITE. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT: http://creativecommons.org/about/what-is-cc ABOUT ALISON CROGGON Born in 1962, Alison Croggon writes in many genres, including poetry, criticism, theatre and prose. She is Melbourne theatre critic for the national daily newspaper, The Australian, and keeps a blog of theatre criticism, Theatre Notes. In 2009, she was named Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year. Her poetry has been published widely in anthologies and magazines in Australia and overseas. Her most recent poetry publication is Theatre (Salt Publishing 2008). Her first book of poems, This is the Stone, won the 1991 Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes. Read more about Alison and her work by visiting her website: http://www.alisoncroggon.com. ABOUT CORDITE POETRY REVIEW Cordite Poetry Review is an Australian-based journal of poetry and poetics. Founded in 1997, and online since 2001, Cordite is dedicated to showing off Australian and international poets to the world. Over the past decade, Cordite has published over one thousand poems, five hundred feature articles and reviews, plus hundreds of blog posts, photos, audio poems, illustrations and comments - all of which are freely available on the Cordite site. The publication of Cordite is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts. Cordite Poetry Review is also archived every six months by the National Library of Australia's Pandora Project. CODE IS POETRY WORDS ARE BULLETS