AUSTRALIAN POETRY

COLLABORATION

#15

ADELAIDE & PERTH

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NEED TO KNOW…

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FEATURING

from

PERTH

David Barnes, Andrew Burke, Martin Chambers, Liana Joy Christensen, Josephine Clarke, Suzanne Covich, Lynne DePeras,

Kevin Gillam, Helen Hagemann, Louise Helfgott, Patricia Johnson, Trisha Kotai-Ewers, Patricia Moffett, Anne Morgan,

Jeanette Nelson, Susan O’Brien, Virginia O'Keeffe, Glen Phillips, Marcella Polain, Flora Smith, Rose van Son,

Jayne Surry, Lyndal Vercoe & Julie Watts

from

ADELAIDE

Jude Aquilina, Christina Bell, Sharon Kernot, Kimberley Mann, Louise Nicholas, Amelia Walker & rob walker

¯¯¯

PERTH

David Barnes

in still places

………………st. john boys home

it was on friday

i said i would be there

help, raid the storeroom

supplies.

“i was caught creeping

in shadows.”

the cobwebs

of my mind– burn

the thud of discipline –

strikes.

i flew elsewhere

down indistinct fissures

away from consuming

claws;

“in to the longed-for

abyss–of– nonexistence.”

i was neither here

nor there

although my friends knew

where i was;

i did not see, feel, hear

rain beating against windows –

or the howling

wind.

infinite in

my childhood-mind

a phrase hammered within me. ---------

“hey things

are, as they are; it’s time.”

time to make your final run –

no more

walls.

after, there were

no more

Walls.

Andrew Burke

Which artist painted that?

My pup scratches at the bottom drawer

of my desk, scratches and keeps

scratching, so much so

that I relent and pull the drawer

out. In it, rolled up tight,

is a sheet of butcher’s paper painted

in blues and greens, neo-realistic

if only we could read

the realism it is neo to. It is

our world, a detail thereof,

from the view and comprehension point

of a pre-school child, grandchild perhaps.

This is My View, it seems to say,

a clear view of where grass absorbs

sky, river meets ocean,

a disclosure one day for the ancients

in their dotage.

Chances are the artist attends school now

and learns more and more logic

and language skills each day. Still

ocean seeks grass, river reflects

sky. His poem about a truck

is illustrated and pinned on

the display board. In his poem

the truck carries things

and drives between shops, but

it has a disquietening element the author

will not change: his truck drives

north, it seeks North unerringly.

Teachers dismiss this as

a blemish, Father wants to know

how the truck will ever return to base,

and Mother tousles his hair, saying,

He’s just a boy, he’s just a boy.

Grandpa bends down to ask,

Do you want to be a truckdriver

when you grow up? No, he shakes

his head, a scientist, only

a scientist. Can’t they see that?

Martin Chambers

Thousands protest global warming

I saw a picture, on the internet,

Thousands protest global warming.

Snowmen was all it was,

their carrot noses and downturned eyes

Accusingly,

Accusing ME!

‘Do something’ I yelled back.

‘You’re going to melt.’

But they had no ears.

What kind of fool made them,

that cannot hear the warning?

Liana Joy Christensen

Imp Spinning

The thing is, you see, I’m no princess-to-be

you won’t catch menopausal me easily

with your devil’s deals

I’ll do what I must

trapped in this barn

dust motes glitter briefly

as each afternoon the door cranks open

just enough to admit the forklift carrying

forms, forms, forms

You expected donkeys?

This is the 21^st century!

Still the central facts stay static

say, a woman in a barn labouring

against impossible odds to produce

the expected miracle

Alone in a barn

in despair

the air grows ever drier

the towers of silent paperwork attract

vultures that fastidiously eviscerate sleep

a sinewy thread of dream dangles

from the lammergeyer’s beak

while in the furthest reaches of nightmare

forms perform unspeakable acts

with white trash junkmail

spawning triplicates

Chaos

Entropy

Death

who from birth defy their Father Bureaucracy

I’ve been around a time or two

so it’s no surprise when

right on cue the imp appears

and with a flourish bows low

“Alzheimer’s at your service”

Now here’s a new twist

The imp shrugs theatrically

“Rumplestiltskin’s strictly for entry.

Me I work with exits.

The deal’s the same either way”

I sigh and sign

then together we make a wheel of words

and spin

the forms into gold.

Josephine Clarke

Returning to Chudalup

karri trees

drip wet light

draw a veil over me

yellow leaves

lost pieces of stained glass

stud the path

leaf litter

musty sanctuary

calling past winters

the canopy thins

granite waits

beneath an overcast sky

I climb the time worn dome

breath rushes

I am back at that place

where young lovers

carve their initials

in rock

love and stone

against each other

on a timeless covenant of landscape

Suzanne Covich

The Man in the Moon, God, Hansel & Gretel

Too much, too small to

see it all back then. Now,

I take time to look and listen,

see the pictures framed clearly

as birds beyond these walls

sing me into my smallness where I

find, yet again, the lost, the broken

bits and begin to fit them together.

I dream of the Man in the Moon, the

little girl growing big too soon, growing

wings to fly along silver beams, the Moon Man

said, again and again, would hold me—

guide me safely through stars far beyond any sky,

my small eyes could see back then.

Grown men darken the house, the school,

the baker’s van. They stand, make shadows in the

corner of her room. She fights, talks to fish, cows,

to a God she cannot see and does not believe, will

lead her safely through the night. She runs, no

longer cowering down to wild bulls, no

longer fearing the dark swirling river.

She forgets, she blanks out, she’s lost the I,

finds it hard to string sentences together. She

dreams of motorbikes and Australia, curls up

like a child yet to be born, she screams

a scream her sisters help her to remember.

Split, silenced, alone, her dreams of escape, take

her too soon into the arms of a lover—pillar to

post, pillar to post, her world spins too fast for her.

Strong and unafraid, it’s the fishing she loves,

the family eventually together, safe sleeping in beds

in a house near the water. She’s proud to be

her mother’s helper and longs for new wings to

to free her from swings, to fly high, to plunge

into the bay to find mermaids to play with forever.

She’s Gretel. Big Hansel and Gretel, they

sail the seas, they love one another, travel to

new countries. Gretel learns to cook, clean, sew and

get over her resistance to aprons and kitchens. She’s

the mother, the unquestioning, child mother, silent and

ashamed, so very unlike the Mary she played at Xmas in

schools where she once dressed in blue to sing Lullaby and

Goodnight with a heart open to boundless opportunities.

Patterns, attracted to opposites, we think, but

deep down, the sameness sinks in as too much

wine settles the desire to run into stories that

once comforted her. She’s alone, terribly alone, and

in the silence, dark, drunken silence, she reaches out

with words that connect to something other.

Lynne DePeras

The England-Australia Thing

It isn’t possible to know what your country is like

Except for that first second’s glimpse

At the touching on tarmac

Over the wing

Of the plane returning you from the ancestral place

Scrub, the first second’s glimpse of it

Scrub growing out of grey sand

By the tarmac

Scrub low

As the hills look low, low as the new-built airport terminal

Sun beats on the wing of your plane still turning

On heated tarmac

And on faces waiting.

Beats out of you all love of sun

Sun dries the heart out, beats on skin

Beats on the silvered skin of the car you’re in

Speeding witlessly

Past architected buildings

In the car the cottoned bodies talk of beach-white sand

Your mind is here

But the feeling in you lags behind

In a distant rain deep land

Kevin Gillam

a crooked eye

as I wash me in you

the clock fibs, night folds while

you hover, watch me in you

the light antique now,

lemoned at the edges

as I wash me in you

moths are drunken deckhands,

jigging, stopping only as

you hover, watch me in you

if you were to run fingers

but no, no maps, too soon

as I wash me in you

two notes from mopoke drip,

break the meniscus of thought

while you hover, watch me in you

and the moon casts a crooked eye

over the imagined

as I wash me in you,

as you hover, watch me in you

Helen Hagemann

Salt-filled Memories

for Edith and John Sydenham

Grandfather got sick of hiring Bullions’ boats. From a photograph gone to rust, he says, ‘All summer, the crowd took them at dawn.’ I can picture him standing around bailing his own, that fine piece of hardwood he rowed and baited in, exploding estuary and bay with a waist logic of anchor and chain. My grandmother stashed Sunday leftovers on the best plank, away from the sun and mop of wave. I reflect on her life, knowing nothing of his, only they grew closer in ‘42, fishing for hours until the moon paled over Saratoga, or the whiting skittered to the lighthouse past Box Head. He died there in the boat as the light twirled silver, as the rip deepened, as the bream paced his line, as the briny sea opened its mouth. I remember the lawn hanky at my grandmother’s nose, wondering how she faced the agony of oars. In khaki shorts, Wellington boots dressed for bagging worms, the snapper run, the point’s salt-filled memory, she unravels the lines of her mouth. ‘I turned with the food, with a hot cup of tea, I saw him slumped, asleep.’ In the burning bay, slightly sweating hair, my grandmother placed a consideration of sunstroke in her hands, moistened his curling lip, as if he was not yet gone.

Louise Helfgott

A Moment in Guangzhou

It’s five thirty

In Guangzhou,

Ten million people

Pour home

Into fengshui houses,

A typhoon of faces

Averted, as they flood

The underground stations

Where every moment

Trains hurtle to a thud.

Market alley ways

Conceal a roaring trade

In scorpions and snakes,

Covert police raid

Courtyards and delegations,

Dispersing congregations

Along with free thought,

In the distance

A thunderstorm breaks

Black rain clouds sight,

The silk road

Transformed to a bitumen freeway

Many years ago

The winds of history blew away

Dynasties of olympic proportions,

Gave way to industrial consortiums

That choke and smother,

While in mountainous enclaves

Villages split open by seismic forces

Tearing apart families, brother from brother,

At midnight

The lights turn off

A country shudders to a halt

In the hotel loft

The last departures and arrivals

Herald a new revival

Momentary hope,

At end of day

Peace descends, with the fog,

Ensuring a culture’s survival.

Patricia Johnson

you are walking

dim light drops from the doorway

Into the darkness of the passage.

dust motes hang in air

like flecks of colour that float in your eyes,

rain thrums on the roof

a soft coat of dampness settles on my skin

reminding me of restless storms of long ago.

panes of glass rattle in their cages

and I am lonely and afraid

until I see

that you are walking toward me.

Trisha Kotai-Ewers

On the veranda

(memories of Tom Collins House)

An island lapped by sound’s colours.

The red shriek of galahs, woven through

with a magpie’s clear yellow evening bell of song

punctuated by the maroon shot with brown

of barrackers’ yells as the Saturday game winds down

on the oval.

The faded wood of the veranda has morphed

into a tablecloth for today’s feast, as

Castello cheese, sundried tomatoes and chocolate

odour the air, to tempt me away from writing.

Once Mattie visited a group of poets

here on the veranda,

or so Allan assured us, all a-glitter with excitement.

I wonder if she stands here now, puzzled to see

a gaggle of writers, sitting on her veranda,

breathing in her creative space.

But after nearly sixty years, she must be

used to us by now.

Patricia Moffett

“A cold, hard, beautiful, cruel country,” he says.

He says

She has a cold, hard, beautiful, cruel mind

He says

She is always cold to him

He says

He cannot understand, why?

He says

She is hard, she never cries

At sad films

He says

It is beautiful

Her mind that earns money

For him to spend

He says

She is cruel, unfeeling

He says

During a film scene

He says is pertinent to her

He says

No matter how hard he stares

To impress on her

The error of her ways

And to check that she has registered

His reprimand

He says

She never turns her head

He says

She keeps her face impassive.

He does not know

Inside, she is crying, crying, crying.

Anne Morgan

BREAD UPON THE WATERS, LAKE JUALBUP

Tortoises crossing, the road signs caution;

An ancient shellback is hanging in the shallows,

bearing not the earth upon his shell

but a forest of algae.

Skinflaking.

Still.

Too still.

Black swans hold impossible asanas,

promenade in pairs,

or scroll the lake like Viking longboats.

A ragged stump of swan is dredging depths

where her floating mate is poled to shore.

We think botulism is killing them,

a council workman says, people feed them and they stay

instead of heading off to purer waters.

He buries five tortoises, puts crosses on their graves.

This man maintains the whale spume fountains,

tiles unruly edges, although the mortar

still preserves the graffiti, fuck.

As if the wildlife needed a reminder.

In the shrubbing of that island,

swans brood away from human eyes.

Yet tortoises attack the cygnets.

Eat frail webbed legs.

Three girls hunker at the lake’s edge,

face-pierced adolescents, about your age,

chewing white bread rolls.

Eurasian coots skitter, red-eyed and mendicant,

leaving wakes of Pyrrhic victory.

Those girls have read the signs

but like you, have not yet learned

that charming waters can brew toxicity.

Summer’s glowering makes feathered bones.

It’s not just wildlife we can love to death.

Jeanette Nelson

Gibb River Station

Dust moves like misty rain
A green frog
clings to the corrigated wall
then jumps
through humid air
and waits for rain

Pippa wets her paws

In the stainless steel bowl

after walking

on the Gibb River track

Wind stirs the warm moist air

School is in

Black eyes brighten as

rain drums on the roof

thunder shakes the clouds

“Deadly Miss”

The mob runs for cover

Dogs bark, cattle low

Rain catches the swirling dust

and turns it into mud.

Susan O’Brien

The Send Off

Her garden flutters white,

photographers stalk the stars,

a rocket explodes midair.

stargazer now dancing with stars,

death is a poet,

death is nearly always a poet.

Only the poem has to live first.

Virginia O'Keeffe

HIDING SIN IN FREMANTLE

I

The wall curved a slight angle
patched and cemented,
convict hewn masonry
cutting sky, blocking cloud
embracing the wires.
Only the guardbox incongruously perched
broke its breadth,
snooped on the men beneath the wall.

Over Knutsford Street the wall's shadow throws itself
into the branches of scribbly gums
onto the veins of bull-nosed verandahs
fingers under floorboards of cottages
with limestone skirts, down lacy collars.

When workers lived in this street
did they lie awake and fear the men beyond the wall?
Perhaps they judged them harshly
or in the quiet rhythm of their lives
thought not of crims at all.
But when the death knell belled on the Freo breeze
Only then did they open their hearts and weep
for those behind the wall.

II

The bell of St Francis tinny on the breeze
chimes out four strokes on the hour.
Up Ord Street a musician
trombone bouncing, runs awkwardly
disappears through the wall.
Above the gaol no angels
just an avalanche of cloud
hanging.

Who does the musician blow his bones for?
Oom pa! Warders? Murderers ? Pa Pa Pa!
Who's the patron saint of prisoners
the lost and weak? Oom pa! Oom pa!
Certainly not St Francis
with his bell and braying sheep.

It seems Joshua has forsaken this wall.

Glen Phillips

I SAW AN ECHIDNA

Once in wheatbelt bushland all alone

an echidna hid its head from me.

It crawled into a fallen hollow limb

from a whitegum on the woodland floor

and left its prickled back to face my

expected attack. Or whatever I’d do.

And you also? Did you have the thought

I might come crashing through your woods

when you’ve been busy day and night

working your heart out for your family?

Checked in my stride, I sense you seek

to hide your face from my reality.

I touch the sharp spines you raise

as you draw back. This whole landscape

makes you feel lonely perhaps. But I

am the intruder, foreigner in sacred place.

Should just think myself lucky, mate,

I was privileged to share your space

Marcella Polain

The gate (or, consultation with a pain specialist)

All across this bayside suburb, jewels gleam from women like light.

Streets poach beneath banks of peppermint trees.

Carparks bloom against beds of roses.

I am whooshed to the appropriate floor in shining, scented machinery that speaks.

The receptionist bounces her cleavage between me and all the other contraptions.

You sat so close I could have touched you like you touched me, squeezed

my arms and legs, saying This muscle? And this? But there are rules.

Rule one:

You have soft, white inquisitor’s skin.

Your shirts are pale and fine as noon.

I watch your wide pink tongue behind

your long white teeth and

fumble through my own vocabulary.

When, finally, you ask why I became sick,

I feel your bite. Quick and

through to the smell of me.

The hot bewildered bone in my

speechless upturned hands.

Rule two:

I am at the gate.

My hands are useless at its mechanism.

On its other side, you – sentinel –

have narrowed your eyes like a sleepy horse I

once fed my lunchbox apple.

There should be tiny white spider orchids,

plump hands of purple-wanderer,

shy bobtails by the fence posts.

Paterson’s curse should be a striking knee-high purple sea.

You could snort your hot horse-breath into my hand.

I could stroke your neck, your long warm flank.

And you. You could mount me like the stallion you believe you are.

Rule three:

I watch your tongue, feel the holes in my face.

Search them for a password, a confession sweet enough for

you. To lick. And nibble. Lick and nibble, nip.

And open. Nip and open, unlock. Release.

Release me.

(First published in: Therapy like Fish: new and selected poems by Marcella Polain, 2008: John Leonard Press; Melbourne)

Flora Smith

Where the birds were

They still ask what happened at the windmill.

As if someone drowned in a dam might resurface.

I do know the blades moved and he fell;

he fell at my feet. That was all.

Of the time before, I only remember the birds;

the windmill covered with them when we came

like a widow wrestling with a mourning bonnet.

They rose together, leaving me in the sun-

blind morning with a flash of black umbrella,

and him climbing the windmill.

When they found me, I kept asking about the birds.

I knew if I found the birds, that was where he would be.

Rose van Son

Morning Sonata

he plays

harpsichord

sonata in D major

rolls notes with his eyes

prisms in his ears

pry music

in concert

trebles caress fingers

knit together

purl rows

takes her breath away

Jayne Surry

A Valentine

I’m a designated carer,

$100 a fortnight

To care for my loved one.

We rarely talk of love –

But then we never did.

Love is in the action,

Doing for someone the things

He cannot do for himself.

It’s contrary to everything I believed once.

Last night I found half the contents of my freezer

On the kitchen floor abandoned there

When he went in search of ice.

Growth for me is not mentioning it,

Silently throwing the thawed contents away.

I used to say “Don’t you remember?”

But he doesn’t.

I repeat the same information

Sometimes three times in ten minutes.

I’m no saint

And sometimes it’s repeated through gritted teeth

Though he doesn’t seem to notice now.

I wonder how he feels.

He doesn’t want to talk about it.

The journey must be terrifying.

My presence is necessary and non-negotiable.

Does he believe it’s love?

Lyndal Vercoe

In the City of Glass

He listens to the compass of his soul

the needle-point inclines towards the East.

He listens to the patters of a pattern

beats which fall in circles

small repeats

untempered

like the mutter of a waterfall.

Like a wall of water falling

in continuum, incessant

water surging

sometimes ebbing

susurration

comfort to chambers of the heart.

Sounds like water spinning spiral columns.

These he calibrates until

his wall of water stands.

He sifts through sound

weighs it in the balance against Hesperus

strains out old excesses

shaking it in rhythm as the water falls

finds mute.

Julie Watts

There's something wrong with the sky

though its a canvas unblemished and

blue

there's something wrong with the sky

though birds sail mildly

there's something wrong -

for the river

that smooth jade mirror

is broken

is khaki

with black lapels on torn shoulder collars

there's something wrong with this oh so perfect sky

that peers calmly through the hand span of the oak

the river the river

jagged and splintering

under oblivious sky.

¯¯¯

ADELAIDE

Jude Aquilina

Bovidae capra

Goats will keep your blackberries

at bay, they said, just build

a little shed, for they feel the cold,

and let them graze your paddocks

clean. They omitted to add

they're vertical creatures:

easy to see how they rose

to devil status, reaching up

on hind liegs to seize forbidden

leaves, fruits and laundry.

Yes, they'll eat your prickles

and weeds, but as cheese and greens

when they've cleaned out all the

gourmet feed, defoliated, deflowered

and devoured any trace of flora.

Fences are exercise hurdles;

gates, persistently nudged

till they budge and part to let

the herd into virgin pastures,

or the lolly shop of my pot plants.

They climb like Tom Sawyer

out along gnarled branches

to strip the ancient gum tree bare

all the while, they bleat and butt.

One by one we eat our mistakes.

Christina Bell

Bodhisattva’s Reward

When your heart feels joy

it is enlivened, made beautiful.

Your growing peace births a formless, still mind

and loving kindness makes your soul brave.

Life sighs between endings and beginnings –

let go, let go, let go.

Priceless gems of wonder arise from this grace:

love in action, true forgiveness beyond understanding.

Such boldness embraces pain

turning fear into acceptance and doubt into certainty.

Each day brings chances to serve and be served –

lifetimes removed from your past limitation.

Softening daily, humming playfully

chortling at the deep happiness found within Nature’s love

your gifts shine brighter, your heat beats stronger

your will evolves into faith and light.

Whatever surrounds

love tempers might.

Sharon Kernot

Mrs Brown

We like to have a few

me and my friend June

she comes over with her husband

she’s not young, like me she’s sixty-three

and we might have a bottle of Brown Brothers

just one

and then we’ll get carried away

and we’ll say –

Where’s Mrs Brown

Go and get us a Mrs Brown from the fridge –

and we’ll send the men out

while we talk and talk

and they roll their eyes

cos we might start laughing or crying

and the tears

oh God the tears

we cry and cry

but we’re happy

and we’ll drink every drop of Mrs Brown

that’s in the house

and then June and her husband’ll stay the night

you know cos they’ve drunk too much

to drive home

and the next day

oh God it’s terrible

we feel awful – really, really sick

but we love a drink we do

we love our Mrs Brown.

Kimberley Mann

Shadow Lifters

Trees flex their muscles at dawn

Creak their backs in young winds

Trunks strain upwards to stretch

Stiff from the stillness of sleep

Warmed by slanting sunshine, as morning

Stretches long they begin the heavy work

Of lifting all the black shadows slowly upwards

Trees awesome silence stuns us

Watching their stillness we witness this sacred lifting skywards

They pull the shadows upwards until they are above their heads

Well muscled branches hold the shadows up, victorious

All weight & darkness held up for the count at noon

For the decades of minutes this lasts, almost drowning in light

All trees lift themselves under invisible halos, are channels for energy

Following the brief chance to rest in even balance

A time of easy holding, the heaviness of the day weighs

Branches sigh with the heat and all this effort

Perfectly synchronized they begin their lowering act

Houdini, carefully, into a tunnel

Muscles fatigued, shaking but still in control

Afternoon is dangerous

All trees make this gradual semaphore

For the landing of shadows, the grounding of shapes

Trees alone have the ability to flatten

The world for sleep, for rest, simplicity

Very slowly, in full faith, each tree lets the shadows

Back down, belaying the woman, the man

Each of us, tidily to the ground, in increments

Lowering very gently with rope

Dark circles widening, tender hands to let them down

One by one – so as not to chip the crust of the earth

Or shock the animals & insects with the terrible thud

Of the impact

Of the absence

Of light.

Louise Nicholas

Isadora Duncan's breasts

Sometimes, one of them peeked above the parapet,

cocked a snook at the policeman in the wings

whose job it was to make sure they stayed on home detention.

At other times, aided and abetted by perishing elastic,

one of them would find itself, eye-to-astonished-eye,

with the audience.

And once or twice, awakened by murmurs

from the orchestra seats, and hoots of feigned disgust

from the gallery, the other breast joined it

and they swayed together, enjoying the rush of cool air

and feeling totally ‘at two’ with the music.

It never lasted long of course:

the policeman would return from a swig of bootleg,

and Isadora would gather up her twin Isadorables

and pop them back in the papoose of her Grecian tunic.

But there was one occasion, when an aging Isadora,

aggrieved by jeers of “fat old cow” and

“mutton dressed as lamb”,

ripped her tunic to the waist and invited her breasts,

blushing pink with pride, to take a deep and dangling bow.

“This,” she said, “this is beauty!”

Amelia Walker

Tidal

Skin
against skin
against skin against
your skin, so smooth
and hot. I want nothing
but touching. You. Your skin, mine
stripped back. Skinless. Serpents. Dying. Being born.
Ripe. Raw. Sweaty. Sunset breaking, a blood egg
over reckless waters. Shadows of gold. Our tongues
laughing dolphins, surfing ripples of salt. Breaking
into fits of skinless. Breathing. Screaming
I want nothing but touching
you and your skin
against skin against
skin against
skin.

rob walker

The Mouth

From the barrages we pad the dunes crunch underfoot cockles on ancient middens

through teatree towards a distant roar. rollers dumping and foaming. salt spray soft-focussing the scene so only the centre where you stand is sharp, the edges shrouded.

A permapine line of pickets stakes a fort to keep the 4wds beyond the pale.

A world of white and shades of grey on this overcast day Walk towards the River Murray Mouth and see no one else in three hours, swallowed as sandgrains in the vastness.

Beached sandcrabs, chalk bone of cuttlefish soaked in its own ink, kelp, oystershells worn to blackness and flat smooth palmsized stones for skimming all in muted monochrome

Then the detritus of colour.

Shreds of polyrope in fluoro orange, blue, green. A manmade gaudiness of excess. Lids from shampoo bottles, a rubber ball, trash from passing ships. The disposable.

Always the rumbling roar of wind and sea.

towards the Mouth, the wasteland. A string of orange pennants to mark soft edges. Expanse of sameness. A desert of bulldozed sand, homogenous, devoid of weed, pebbles, shells, ripples. Spinifex flashing curved needles of light in the wind The great black serpent of the dredge pipe snaking over the dunes

The pipesnake shudders and heaves, throbs and pulses Press an ear to the peristalsis

and it whispers the word

silk

as black sludge passes through itself.

At the end the snake regurgitates black bilge and spews it swirling to the southern ocean, eroding away the last dune

The new Mouth of the mighty Murray renamed

Discharge Location A

(originally published in micromacro, Seaview Press, 2006)

¯¯¯

This edition arises from a FAWWA established writer’s residency funded by

WA Dept. of Culture & Arts in Tom Collins House, Perth where I had the privilege

to interact with a vibrant community of poets. “En route” I was able

to spend a short time in Adelaide.

Special thanks to the FEDERATION OF AUSTRALIAN WRITERS WA & SA WRITERS’ CENTRE.

MEUSE PRESS publishes this collection.

APC is an occasional anthology.

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