by John Tranter
danger is that the rain will wash away my lightning-flash glamour. The danger
is that you feel my softening. The danger is that you know it already. The danger is
that my rained-on hair cannot pretend to be a satin sheet. The danger is that
the only umbrella I have is paper, crimson and stuck in my third drink.
The danger is that I am well out of my depth in this gutterless downpour. The
danger is that you feel the mercury’s rise and rise. The danger
is that you don’t feel its rise, retaining your leather-jacketed cool. The danger is
that I am making this up out of nothing. The danger is that.
Misreading
Claire Potter
I’ll say how it’s done so the difficult questions can be leavened
into small loaves of bread given in praise of crows.
Let’s start at the beginning: under a perilous sun she wore
medallions of clear plastic, pom-poms of summer grass;
I wore fretted blues and feathered kneepads so our scuffle
precluded my bruised knees.
It is true I ripped her earring out which looked more dramatic
than it was.
She did hit me first, by the creek and the single willow
and after that, to my mind, she no longer resembled an orchid.
So yes I pushed her flat into the dirt of this
difficult country; and it is true that I write as I read –
mistaking wreaths for wraiths, spires for spines, girls for orchids
Cute
David Prater
… the cute and loving appreciation of my book and me
by them in Australia has gone right to my heart.
—WALT WHITMAN writing to Bernard O’Dowd, 1891
i wish to specifically send remembrances & love to you
& how is your mother bernard is she well? i do hope so
(tho i’ve never met her or your good self nevertheless
send her my regards & tell her to water the daisies often
& fred woods is well? i do hope the bruise heals soon
(tho what happened to him i can’t tell either no matter
& young jim hartigan is he likewise well? i do hope so
but please do send him my best regards & the solution
to this week’s crossword is enclosed ada i do hope she’s
well you speak so highly of her i wonder whether she’s
not your real wife after all now don’t go jumping to
conclusions bernard i can only go by what you tell meh
about your bowel movements bernard are they regular
i pray so for you know my views on this issue prunes &
buttermilk (enough said eva i presume she’s well oh
i hope so & as i know oh she’s very cute in that photo
you mentioned enclosing never did arrive unfortunately
still i see her pretty well from here & very cute she is
& her parents mr & mrs fryer are both cute i hope so
please also kindly pass on to dear mr fryer my sincere
congratulations on winning the bridge tournament &
i don’t ask how i know! tell ted he’s wanted in several
states over here (i’m sure he’ll get the joke it’s private
i don’t recall who louie is but please send him or her
fond salutations & finally tom touchstone who i can’t
place (no i’m getting nothing but suppose & hope he
is well i guess that’s all but hi also to other friends not
named e.g. pet cats the milkman (oh he is a cute one
How we tell stories about ourselves
Aden Rolfe
It’s a road you recognise from a car ad. What’s it like to live here,
do you think, driving the same winding stretch every night,
waiting on set – that is, at home – for your thirty seconds
between snatches of Law & Order? And how do places
become redolent with stories, I wonder, what do they tell
about us?
We’re already back at the house, though, drinking coffee as
morning mist drifts past. We flip a coin to decide who’s taking
the kids to soccer and who’s going to the beach with our young,
loosely clothed friends. They remind me of evangelists, the way they
perform without being prompted, sipping coke, laughing, having a great
time. Later, while you get grass stains out of the whites and I
knock together a no-fuss dinner, all I can think about is fucking them,
like, really going at it, real rough, dirty sex.
I need to go for a walk, step outside the frame,
marshal my resources. I think about when we bought our first house,
or got our first newspaper subscription (I can’t remember which),
and it’s apparent, even then, that things were already breaking
down. And so projecting forward, we can only wait to see
our hearts breaking, be recast, lose sight of what matters. There were no
simpler times, it turns out, no house by the beach. I don’t recognise
anything now, much less tell stories or go driving, but
whatever happens, I look forward to looking back on this moment.
Cicerone
Peter Rose
Now is the time for the crucial chandelier.
Choose an hour when no one else is there,
the heat intense, the couturiers gone away.
Lead me down a circuitous route
barely speaking, the better to anticipate.
Part the leathern doors and introduce me
to the obscurest church ever visited.
Teach me about its forked history,
how it was bombed and rebombed
and sulkily rebuilt.
Point out the seminal chandelier
with its thousand-year-old brass
flung into the Tiber in a vandal’s pique.
Indicate each notch on the ruined pulpit,
the mincing lion and indignant unicorn.
Move ahead of me into the sacristy,
remarking on a particular cerement.
Reveal each nuance of your classic neck.
Quote
Penni Russon
Outside
There’s a dragon wind
A man comes to give a quote
For the dead trees
He clears his throat
I think he is going to go with Proust
‘Your soul is a dark forest’
Or Gibran (popular
At weddings and funerals):
‘If you reveal your secrets to the wind
You should not blame the wind
For revealing them to the trees’
Instead he tells us
Two thousand
Two hundred
Cut to the ground
Daphnis and Chloe
Gig Ryan
He rides a Segway through the topiaried hedges
of the Institut pour le Développement Harmonique
Next it’s granite and a TV spin-off
while she squirms in the scullery, an emulsifier
and a theodolite on each hand
when in Preston she crossed a ditch of sobs
She gathers the covenant to heart, before it lobs
her followers. Thought sledges
a wicket, but whether from glee or
a stand
against corruption, who knows, a fit of pique
may as well summarise. She blogs: a death-defier
He pails water from a trough
parting a fence’s palings with finesse, a cough
whistles. The demonstration magnifies her probs
and immanence, an astrolabe warped like a tyre
falls across some scratched ledgers
that yearn to annotate and squeak
of her chlorophyll, but awfully fanned
cards gloat and claim the land
was swamp. All bets are off
Return to the campfire: its clique
substitutes logs for chairs and sprigs for knobs
a saddle supporting her head edges
its cinders, i.e. the remains of a local flyer
promoting the environment, as if what they require
could ever class a gluey saraband
over dinner of fried wedges
He resumes the inspection, with Prof.
at an elbow, advising how to maximise jobs
and measuring exactly where the fountains leak
Whirr of helicopter off screen, over to Seek
.com. Either that or the National Choir
warbling probity, while an overseer dobs
her in. His wistful Peter Pan’d
check a rabbit fence will slough
the paddocks, while sunset’s pink valve ceases pledges
– all Greek to her, she dredges
up some prior ownership, he bobs
among the damned, all the usual stuff
The Faces of the Unpunished
Philip Salom
The trouble is they look so ordinary.
No tattoos no stubble and no concealed weapons
tucked into the belt
spoil the cool immaculate hang of their suits.
These Brahmins of the caste
system we shouldn’t call a market it sounds
like the butcher and fishmonger and smells
off. The suits rob us of millions without
a single cop car screeching to a stop
(no melodrama, no bullet-proof vests).
The workers walk out into the too-real sun
and the directors pay themselves off
surreal millions, their features unremarkable
as if money erases them, and indifference keeps
them young. Not public signs for us to consider
these faces no one can bring to mind.
Mr Habitat Delivers a Speech to the Lapidarists
Andrew Sant
One day, eventually, no escaping,
I give a speech – special guest
at the podium: stress. Gem
of an audience, a convention
of lapidarists. Hot, I broke open
the topic.
What was the problem?
I’d rather have been lost among rocks,
fractures and folds, than found
formally dressed, among strangers.
Exposed. They sat like fossils.
I gripped the podium as if
on a cliff, troubled there
by vertigo. Spoke. It was something
of a lava flow. My only hope
to cling to the script, stay cool
in the face of stony ridicule.
I’m flowing now, as if the video
won’t leave me alone, the footage fresh
with my quaking. I go
along with the painted tribesmen, sad
to have their spirits stolen
by a rigid cameraman … walked
away from surprise applause, pocketed
their gift: a polished trilobite.
Give it, at home in my warm palm
– wide of any seismic likelihood –
a reception better honed
only in the Cambrian explosion.
The Place in Darkness
Michael Sariban
What is it he’s after – that book he lent you,
that tie left behind in your wardrobe?
Does he think you’ll change your mind?
What is it he’s after, this close to nightfall
and no lights on in the house –
bruising his knuckles on your door,
and you not about to answer.
He’ll get sick of it, wait and see.
I admire your easy dismissal, glad
I’m not bruising mine.
You settle yourself back on me.
Hard, under the warmth of your skin,
to imagine being out in the cold,
standing on the other side of the door
with only your anger to hold.
January
Jaya Savige
for Peter Gizzi
We sit to a bowl of miso ramen,
same as the night before, only this time
you’re coming down with something
and need the chilli. Later we’ll sketch
a brief history of risk, the word’s
first appearance in a seventeenth-
century translation of the Lusiad,
the Portuguese retelling of Homer
with da Gama as Odysseus; how
mortality data drawn from the plagues
in England gave birth to actuarial
science, and Halley, of comet fame
crunched the numbers for the seeds
of life insurance – the epistemic
shift from the providential view
that meant you’d sooner sacrifice
a goat before a trip than trust in
numbers. These days we rationalise:
what’s the probability of the plane
falling out of the sky? You’re far
more likely to be struck by lightning.
Did I tell you my father died in a plane
crash? you’ll say, and I – mortified
by my hypothetical, nodding as you
explain your penchant for Xanax
on cross-Atlantic flights – think back
to this moment, ladling miso into
our mouths, steam rising in winter,
you explaining how you nursed
your dying mother this September
and muttering, half under your breath:
Dying is so expensive in America.
On the Up & Up
Mick Searles
an giv my best
ta y’r missus
he ends his mobile
trying to sell
something –
insurance
cars
ice cream
it doesn’t matter
the world makes sense
to him
flitting around
the c.b.d.
asking
urging
selling
the smart ones
will tell you
it’s all just energy
they won’t tell you
about the intelligence
behind it
that stolid
ruthless
poison.
Georges Perec in Brisbane
Thomas Shapcott
With the slums of Paris as the norm
Of course Brisbane is exotic.
Imagine ripe mangos dropping on your roof
Or the insistent flight of flying-foxes
Every evening. Humidit
y
Could be midsummer anywhere
Particularly mid-continent. It will pass.
Growth – not human – is what matters.
Humans are peripheral here
Whereas they are all that matters in Paris.
Life might be something to use;
Here it does not count. Insects
Have as much claim: they are everywhere.
It is strange to feel so isolated.
Do I feel something is wrong? No.
Everything has its own proportion
But I will go back to what I think of as home
And in ten months I will think of mosquitoes
As the improbable cousins of humanity.
Heroes of Australia
Michael Sharkey
In bedrooms of Australia they are waking up and saying
What did I say and you know you should have stopped me and
My god did I say that and saying never that’s the end of it no more
I’m giving up and swearing off it while their heads are full of saucepans
falling endlessly to floors made out of steel
And they are wearing cast-iron turbans that are growing ever smaller
round their temples while the stereo bangs on: it’s descant sackbuts,
Philip Glass and Chinese Air Force marching bands and whining voices
Is that mine? that try to surface through the note-sludge and the chord-swamp
saying that’s the end I know don’t try to talk to me it hurts
The second last drink always is the one that does the damage what