A cloth spread on the ground, suggestions
Of a modest Lunch on the Grass.
12
The batsman at the other end
Is preparing to take strike.
A general migration has crisscrossed the pitch.
Even plovers tiptoe in the outfield.
Only Long-on seems rooted to the spot,
A sap-shoot of the she-oak, gazing.
13
Grazing, he is musing over extremes,
Amongst them children’s unidiomatic “translations”
Into French, e.g. sur la façon maison
For on the way home.
He feels similarly displaced and homeless, forgetting
And forgotten out here on the boundary.
14
The cloned eucalypt canopies
Like a curd of eddying weir foam;
Below them fronds and ferns;
And that’s only the foreground –
Little wonder that he has his back
To whoever plays a straight bat down the line.
15
And closer by far than where the action is
The valley offers an array of strokes:
Lanceolate, pinnate, palmate, trifoliate –
And that’s only where the ball whistles overhead,
Bypassing Long-on,
To be caught by a picnicker.
16
What epiphanies come unbidden
When one is half hidden fielding in shadow?
A squall of rapid pursuit birds
Flies into the arms of the she-oak
Followed by a listening silence...
Then he is distracted, dreaming again.
17
In a vacancy far from the middle
He is considering the children’s riddle
In the flare of the flowering trees:
Four blackbirds sitting on a fence,
One is shot. How many are left?
Answer: None. The others flew away.
18
And the celebrated Steinberg perspective,
New York in detail and, in the distance, Russia,
Suggests his position here:
He is in his own snowbound, blossoming Russia,
Remote from the batsmen who run a leg bye
In expansive Manhattan sunlight.
19
Longeurs of rose papaya,
Long sunlit shafts through the canopy,
Longings for his own efflorescence
In the face of eucalyptus ficifolia folios,
While far away the bails
Tremble but manage not to fall.
John Watson
The Barassi Variations
The Argument: I’ve met Australian Football’s most famous personality a few times and on one occasion he told of a brief sequence of words he had recently heard which, if it were repeated as many times as there were words, with each word emphasised in turn, its meaning would be considerably altered. Thus ‘I never said he took the money.’
Theme
To versify my survey on
such alchemy as words contain,
I’ve thought it through and offer, Ron,
these variants to your refrain
(let’s hope witty, maybe punny):
I never said he took the money.
Indignity
I’m the wrong guy. Who me blab?
Have Golden Rules gone all to seed?
Dealer, ponce, pimp, stoolie, scab:
let’s vomit ‘cause I loathe the breed.
Don’t take us for that kind of bunny!
I never said he took the money.
True Blue
This man’s Aussie and my mate.
You think friendship’s passé, quaint?
Allow me to reiterate:
what’s my line? Well dobbing ain’t!
See here fuckhead, what’s so funny?
I never said he took the money.
Calligrapher
Find the average talkback grating?
Got a voice and fancy choral?
Though when one’s communicating
who’s to say it should be aural?
Scrawled on parchment/ in the dunny
I never said he took the money.
Heavyweight
Well inside our suspect zone,
But out of order, sync and bounds,
we’re looking at a Tyson clone
who could last the fifteen rounds
with Ali, Louis, Dempsey, Tunney.
I never said he took the money.
Vocalist
Young man hits the karaoke.
On me! My shout! Freebee! Gratis!
Talent scouts cheer. Almost broke he
nearly turns recording artist,
gets cold feet, walks out on Sony.
I never said he took the money!
Schoolmasters
Meanwhile with over-focused eye
pedagogues like swarms of gnats
amplify and specify
theses, thoses, this ‘n’ thats;
turning grammar, syntax runny:
I never said he took the money!
Lothario
The chauvinist rolled out his line:
‘All babes love it, I won’t hurt you.
Your place equally as mine
to dispose that shrinking virtue?’
Advantage seized? Well maybe honey,
I never said he took the money.
Girl Talk
It’s a staple through the ages,
gold-digger teams with sugar pa.
Till in receipt of final wages:
‘With men I’m through so ciao ‘n’ taa.’
Goodtime gal turned out quite nunney.
(Although of course she took the money.)
Alan Wearne
A Quiet Morning
As a man feels an assurance
when getting on a horse and settling
in the curved saddle, knowing
where he is going, the long nose
lighting the way,
Eloise the female executioner
sits squatly with her axe, all arm muscles
ready to ripple. She waits
in the corner of the stage,
eyelids sprung, fingers white.
Ahead of her the field prickles
in the morning light, the stumpy trees,
creamy flowers, circumspect squirrels, the miles and miles of it,
all topped off with a hovering mist.
This afternoon her axe will fall
on the tiny neck of Anne Boleyn.
Eloise does not know if Boleyn deserves her death.
What she knows is that death
already floats upon her like a stream of blue ribbons,
and death’s own hands are wrapped round Eloise’s.
She is a worker, she works, and when she has struck
death’s dying is done.
Petra White
Apollon Musagète
Critic: Tell me, Mr. Balanchine, where did you ever see Apollo on his knees?
Balanchine: Tell me, Mr. So and So, where did you ever see Apollo?
I. Prologue
All good art begins with a weird birth unseen,
or seen as dotted rhythms knocking hard on high: here
a mountainous mother, heaving a landslide
to cushion the fall
out of the swaddling massive. Quick—coupé
turning point to quaver weedy limbs.
There will be no dead spots anywhere.
II. Variation of Apollo
The problem of the poem—like the problem of the lute—
can be thawed with play. Instructions:
~ present outwards, unsure of score or strength or harmony;
~ pitch arms wide for a full circle strum;
~ learn the sting of withered efforts and proceed
body over neck over body with youthful generosity.
These are studied revolutions in attitude and grace.
III. Apollo & the three Muses
A choreographer may tell you this: it always pays
to reinvent oneself, surrounded by women
adept at odd lines—women who grand battement
on pointe and stretch their blistered toes to the sun.
Women who insist a flat-footed shuffle, a turned-in leg
or bent pirouette; sharp educators in civil disobedience
offering tutorials in filigree counterpoint:
Variation of Calliope
These hands conduct ecstatic verse from the ribcage
through an over-thought Alexandrine density.
When vision is thin, the chest caves in. (This I know).
If you turn your head, I’ll scribble in your sidelines.
Variation of Polyhymnia
sh| gesture can be taught at great speed;
a saucy pirouette with one finger to the lips—
the imagination goes wild. sh| The fun of mime
can be a tonic for new movement; the danger is
(mouth flung wide) O ||
Variation of Terpsichore
One must use the stage wisely to reveal
the body’s jigsaw precision: here are the hips,
twisty as a soda top; the arms breezy; tendons flexed.
The dance is lean-revelation and pluck; the body is a neat thing.
Apollo is opening, closing his fist—neon
flashing lights—and now he knows this
about kick and control; subtle liaisons
of language and line. Let us go, he says,
for a slow walk, or a swimming lesson, or frisky
diversions in the troika. Bounce the strings
fast and strong enough to test our laurels without
fear of fall or rest within the score.
His attention is drawn wide as a curtain
on a New York apartment window.
IV. Apotheosis
Adolescence is a half-hour exertion—so it seems
what’s hard is best learned fast. To dare not use
everything but draw together certain family relations
in one’s art: music, movement, humour—
humble pie and vodka with a side of disagreement
cut short. (We’ll continue the conversation upstairs).
Jessica L. Wilkinson
Based upon the choreography of George Balanchine, 1928 and music of Igor Stravinsky, 1927/28
The First Four Hours
Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
—unknown; often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln
However blunt the blade was
to begin with, one must admit:
the time allocated to undertake the task
seems excessive. Four hours
with the stovepipe hat set aside, the shirtsleeves
rolled, four hours whistling as he held
the weapon to the whetstone’s happy edge
or brought it to the wheel, then depressed
and depressed his hefty boot,
scraping out sparks in a celebratory
cascade. He must have stopped
every so often to roll his shoulders, to stretch
the presidential neck and quadriceps —
nevertheless, patience is the lesson,
patience while his waistcoat darkens
from perspiration, while he ignores
a sacral ache, patience while state business
remains in stasis, patience while the thing
is whittled sharper than the republican
cheekbones from which his gravitas hung. Surely
there comes a point at which the thing
can be no keener, when the dream
of raw timber becomes sweeter
than any genuine sap could be, varnishing
one’s palms with its dark, deciduous gleam.
There must be a moment in which
preparation extends past itself,
past readiness, into the pleasure inherent
in tension; some unstatesmanlike frisson,
too impolitic to mention.
Chloe Wilson
A queer and sultry summer
For Maddie
There’s a fig tree tattooed on your hipbone,
but you want, almost,
the fruit to fall,
for the way the seeds within your belly burn,
that stalklike feeling in the throat.
The waiter asks if we ate too much chocolate over Easter.
You don’t order, I still put saccharine
in my coffee. Your roommates
hid your gym shoes for the long weekend,
and we complain
about our families who forget we’re not unharmed
or let us know how strongly
they are willing us to health:
it’s an investment, mine say.
In dud stocks, I often think, although it’s how they show
they give a fig. I can’t resolve
your need, but feel it spit against my windscreen
the whole way home.
You wear a talisman that scares you.
A dress to match your orange shoes.
I read, that afternoon, that a fig
is just a mulberry turned inside-out;
perhaps we’re silkless.
But there are things
I want for you:
fig jam, fig paste, poached figs, stewed figs, stuffed figs,
a sticky harvest.
The ability
to eat them from the ground.
Fiona Wright
III
death was such good fun –
booze, drugs & poetry.
how did i avoid you?
so Byronic, so good looking!
i’ve grown old & lucky
but still there’s too many of me,
scratching marks on paper, computers,
Beethoven, the horses of Lascaux.
there’s wars for the young but
still our population grows.
spring, & purple flowers spatter the horizon –
i like it here & don’t want to leave
Rae Desmond Jones
Publication Details
Fay Zwicky’s ‘In Memoriam, JB’ appeared in Kenyon Review, Volume 39, Number 2, March 2017.
Robert Adamson’s ‘Winter, Hospital Bed’ appeared in POETRY, November 2017.
Jordie Albiston’s ‘cobalt’ appeared in Verity La, 14 October 2016.
Cassandra Atherton’s ‘Gypsy’ appeared in Antic, January 2017.
Luke Beesley’s ‘Reunion Song’ appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, 1 February 2017.
Judith Beveridge’s ‘Flying Foxes, Wingham Brush’ appeared in Island, Issue 150, September 2017.
Judith Bishop’s ‘The Grey Parrot’ appeared in Australian Book Review, Number 386, November 2016.
Kim Cheng Boey’s ‘Time is a river, time is a bridge’ appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, 1 November 2016.
Ken Bolton’s ‘Reach & Ambition’ appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, 1 May 2017.
Peter Boyle’s ‘Eleutheria’ appeared in his collection Ghostspeaking, Vagabond Press, Sydney, August 2016.
Margaret Bradstock’s ‘Forty-one degrees’ appeared in Quadrant, Volume 61, Number 4, April 2017.
Lisa Brockwell’s ‘The Shower Stall’ appeared in Loving Kindness: Poems from the ACU 2016 Prize for Poetry, Bambra Press, Port Melbourne, September 2016.
David Brooks’s ‘The Night Coming’ appeared Kenyon Review, Volume 39, Number 2, March 2017.
Pam Brown’s ‘Soft Targets’ appeared in Past Simple, Issue 12, May 2017.
Joanne Burns’s ‘compensation’ appeared in the Journal of Poetics Research, 16 September 2016.
Michelle Cahill’s ‘Minor Domestic’ appeared in her collection The Herring Loss
, Arc Publications, Todmorden, October 2016.
Lee Cataldi’s ‘c’est l’homme’ appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, 1 May 2017.
Julie Chevalier’s ‘another step away’ appeared in Meanjin, Volume 76, Issue 1, Autumn 2017.
Eileen Chong’s ‘Kumera’ appeared in Peril, 25 May 2017.
Jennifer Compton’s ‘Two Women’ appeared in Australian Poetry Anthology, Volume 5, Australian Poetry, Melbourne, April 2017.
Stuart Cooke’s ‘Fallen Myrtle Trunk’ appeared in Rochford Street Review, 1 December 2016.
Shevaun Cooley’s ‘meadows empty of him, animal eyes, impersonal as glass’ appeared in his collection Homing, Giramondo, Sydney, May 2017.
Judith Crispin’s ‘Five Threnodies for Maralinga: Part III’ appeared in Axon: Creative Explorations, Capsule 1 (Special Issue), August 2016.
Sarah Day’s ‘Reservoir’ appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, 1 May 2017.
Shastra Deo’s ‘I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields’ appeared in Meanjin, Volume 76, Issue 2, Winter 2017.
B.R. Dionysius’s ‘Barnacle’ appeared in Tremble: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize 2016, International Poetry Studies Institute, Canberra, September 2016.
Lucy Dougan’s ‘The Throne’ appeared in Strange Cargo: Five Australian Poets, Smith|Doorstop books, Huddersfield, June 2017.
Laurie Duggan’s ‘Six Afterimages’ appeared in the Journal of Poetics Research, 1 August 2016.
Adrienne Eberhard’s ‘Distance’ appeared in Australian Book Review’s Tasmanian States of Poetry 2016 Anthology, April 2017.
Ali Cobby Eckermann’s ‘The Apology Day breakfast’ appeared in Overland, Issue 227, Winter 2017.
Stephen Edgar’s ‘La Vita Nuova’ appeared in Kenyon Review, Volume 39, Number 2, March 2017.
Anne Elvey’s ‘Putting on your boots’ appeared in Southerly, Volume 76, Issue 2, January 2017.
Russell Erwin’s ‘Because, like the weather’ appeared in Quadrant, Volume 61, Number 6, June 2017.
Diane Fahey’s ‘The Art of Birds’ appeared in Axon: Creative Explorations, Capsule 1 (Special Issue), August 2016.
Michael Farrell’s ‘The Snake’ appeared in Plumwood Mountain, Volume 4, Number 2, August 2017.
Susan Fealy’s ‘For Cornflowers to Sing’ appeared in the Weekend Australian, 18 February 2017.
Liam Ferney’s ‘Main Street Social’ appeared in Australian Book Review’s Queensland States of Poetry 2017 Anthology, October 2017.
Luke Fischer’s ‘Stones’ appeared in his collection A Personal History of Vision, UWA Publishing, Perth, February 2017.
Toby Fitch’s ‘27 Materialisations of Sydney Cloud’ appeared in Island, Issue 151, November 2017.
The Best Australian Poems 2017 Page 11