Michael Farrell
Angela Gardner
bagboy
lie knew the butt tattoo his friend had but said nothing
afraid someone might think theyd swum together in the school of
easy knocks or aversions he came like a shark & butted
his teeth into the lovers they locked him in a cell
the bays connected to the sea like a heart & he
had rather kill than retreat to his midden of prpis
noone writes about it noone has the rough knife on bark
style needed at night when the nausea peaks & his work
lies undone & an automatic feeling brings him close to someone
who says what he auditions to the air & the speeding
trees he empties his pockets as pathetically as at an airport
sunshine you arent going anywhere but theres noone there to say
it only a building sensation & blood coming out of him
in ecstasy or as close as hell get sympathetic homicide they
call it hallucinatory bullet wounds & the culture says adulterys anachronistic
& jealousys for straights it seemed to him hed proven something
the prison had great acoustics & he had an escapees lungs
; Bel Canto
i moments intervening
one voice and another between language and coupling
spathes of unthrifty music engage a beauty
t not your present, truth
I that devour how when
; when — glass paper metal plastic
all the elements —
into an imitating movement
traced back to the work itself
, which it fills with rightful obsessions
:, heated to a liquidity of touch
: of intention a glancing gaze
or silence remembered
as woven voice opulent
i. even in the sweet mistaken
wholeness of the body
the face
in tile tray is
remembering light
is the memory of light
put down — such a load — for just, a moment
When I first saw this I knew it was something
all about her faces
whose time had come again
David Malouf
Like Our First Paintbox
Like our first paintbox: colour
in graduated rows more various even than the rainbow, encouraging the eye
and the small adventurous hand to try for others, cloud
-castles of a sky more Disney-gaudy
than the azure overhead, as if mineral
dust and breath could reach alchemical midday
on a planet further off
than the one they taste and smell of. Bruise
violet and veridian a threat
of storms I could conduct with an index finger wet
from the cup, catching a hint of what God
felt, trying for this, then that; learning to see the earth
as it is from failed experiments — and even those we give
our hearts to and can't forget.
When sleep has unsealed
our eyes, we walk in the pink woods of that other world our imagine — lost, like all
angels, in the flesh. Mauve grass, red weather, the fruit gift-wrapped in its blue peel, 0 so edible!
Futures and Stardust
A mesh that is not so
seamless.
Those little dings and impossibilities.
Glow out of the big sky.
Innocence is a universe - but not sanctuary.
If friends crash and faces are hollow.
If the thrilling emptiness is just a biology.
Kiss the children between the lies.
Stofe? our whitewashed outlines.
Touching the walls, what is common.
Your cool skin maybe but breathing.
Beyond the stages of importance.
Burrow into the sweeter afternoon.
Perhaps the Stardust song settles it.
It must get easier out in blade.
What flowers, we don't know yet.
JH
100
remains, wJlatyoutouct It is lite space.
101
the most thought-provoking thing
in our thought-provoking time
is that we are still not thinking
& what of thoughts    that you lose accidentally before you have finished    using them stones fallen deep    into a pool     of forgetfulness
could i persuade then    to stay    bribe them with chocolates    or new joggers    try barring the door    arms     operatically outstretched? but those conceptual delinquents    wear their baseball caps backwards    menace rae with handguns & flee
what goes fivm land to land    in the holy night?
i send tracker dogs    to retrieve them but thoughts    have weak scents    & when something more pungent    drifts on the air    the dogs    take a disloyal detour    & i'm left    racking my brains hoping these moments    of absence    will pass as now
we are a sign    that is not read
Chris Edwards
Missing something
Maybe I've been missing something true, luminous and noble — Ian Thorpe has his Kylie Minogue CDs, other people
have Ian Thorpe. Maybe there's something in the world I need to get down pat, or get patted down by like the rest of the crew. But if so, what — or who? And what's this here about going for gold down a pitch-dart stairwell to the startled but amenably blacked-out landing where rioting allegedly continues?
Somewhere, somebody knows something about it. All over the planet people are training kaleidoscopes on it — whether it's tips for effective how-to-ing or quick and easy charms for reproducing winning recipes in chilling little monsters, the kind no-one would ever suggest Ian Thorpe resembles. That'll be him now, wanting to talk to either you or your auxiliary committee about the freak crisis he faces, along with the rest of us, who have been faced with it for quite some time. It's his mission in life to be a reminder, I suppose. I'm confident you'll deal gently with him — after all, it isn't a crime to go traipsing through other people's dreams all night on, what is it, seventeen feet?
114
Michael Farrell
proust aboard a doomed corvette
the blue car was too slow marcel insisted this was a virtue so we toured the galleries gave cats lifts painted bodies as we passed there were some whose souls we entered briefly & saddened like weevils in an opened cheese remained illdisposed to heroics haircutting ate nothing so this is the moon marcel remarked gloomily the life forms are disappointing i dont
understand what god was getting at
leave god out of it i said
annoyed at last by his trilby
twitching watch the road baron
he replied there arent any moon
roads anyway i thought you
were driving out of petrol time
to abandon vessel lay low hope
a cattle farmer comes along we
can steal his wife horizon his
bitter expressions well the first
figure to come along was an army
deserter we were too sentimental
to harm we lent him a cork
shelter a phone that remembered princes number ned kelly shrieSed mp we continued without holdups
144
Dorothy Porter
Radiation
When
pushing back strands ^ her hair straying ^ound her dangerous t^^uipping mouth
kissing her
feeling her mouth open like an anemone under mine
when I flow to her
fast and shallow
like a channel from a deep lagoon frothing across to the sea
I have her intense
It's only afterwards wearily driving hoc I feel my s^a
attention.
flake
away
m a lePrws snowfall
as if IVe strayed and played
™ Jupiter's radiation belt.
145
Pam Brown
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
- ^MS^ 4p ^P" if*''
This is all
this is all I will bring to you
from the deep humidity here
where everything about this evening hurts,
from the helpless beauty of the pale orange sky
to the darkening wall of the cemetery.
tonight it seems we were never here,
that we never slept here.
that the dust gathered in a brand new house
and it became a museum overnight.
this evening short involuntary gasps
interrupt my practice of abstinence
and hurtle me across the equator across the world.
tHIS scRIBing s&
all these beached ripples will wash away their being to reappear , varied only by wind
for the autistic sand knows no better
& the gleeful waves do
so listen here sea:
we'd be lovers
if you weren't so
wet
& blue
literally changing your mind every second
...adieu.
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