States of Poetry

after David Brooks

Red-
tailed Bedouins
of Poetry, black
cockatoos embroider
the sun into us,
seam-rip it asunder.

*

On the Fitzroy's
bank at midday,
cracking seeds of eucalypts
that outrank Council, a hundred
Banks' black cockatoos,
a paroxysm of commas.

*

With their subtler
complex-
ions, the females infinitely
more beautiful
than the ludic-
rously coloured gatherers.

*

The gospel according to the locals:
'Four black cockatoos
kreeing seawards
means four days of rain'
(burkesbackyard.com.au confirms it).
I am not a God-fearing man.

*

Should black cockatoos
know
that theirs are the colours of life?
Indefatigable black
and needlepointed into this
starry orange and yellow.

*

Imprisoned
black cockatoos
long-lived as man
neglectful beneath the same
white sun, its ROYGBIV illusion
destroyed by the tiniest prism.

Stuart Barnes

Woman

the real sea snoring half a mile away
the scrubbed brick walls of the double lounge and its
samples of african drums flood the speakers

Is that your shadow, weightless,
a smudge of grey dust
in the black trickery of the she-oak?

the lyrebird
in the moon,
with her cloudy skirt, shimmies down

Man

There are transparent fish
lifting the mist
fish, coral
and offspring. The red is too brilliant,
big as Africa

or an infant at the telescope's opposite end

cattle walk over a hill, their eyes connected, swivelling
now there is no safety anywhere

The moon will fizz like a pill in a drink ...

Stuart Barnes

a cento sourced from Alison Clark's 'To the Moon Behind Branches', joanne burns' 'moon', Jill Jones' 'waiting for the moon beyond the disco', Dorothy Hewett's 'Moon-Man', Nicolette Stasko's 'The Moth and the Moon', Caroline Caddy's 'Editing the Moon', Kate Llewellyn's 'Speaking of the Moon', Dorothy Porter's 'Full Moon', M.T.C. Cronin's 'Sonnet of Eggs & Moons', Gary Catalano's 'Nocturnes', Robert Kenny's '[Was moved across these waters]', S.K. Kelen's 'Moon Beach', John Kinsella's 'The Healing Of The Circle', Mark O'Connor's 'Moon Over Mindil Beach', Alex Skovron's 'A Concise History of the Moon', Michael Dransfield's 'Philosophy of movement', Peter Porter's 'Diana and Actaeon', Alan Gould's 'Moon'.

... it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
—Sylvia Plath, 'A Birthday Present'

Here's some activity you may have missed:
pompadour-lure hung three days after I
disentangle.
                       'It misses me.'
The fourth: A lot has happened on
Facebook since you last logged in. And later:
Do you know [famous so-and-so]? You have more
friends on Facebook than you think.
                                                               Emboldened,
the fifth: You have new friends on Facebook.
'You can never have enough friends!' O.M.,
M.H. and two others have their birthday
today on the sixth.
                                 Her photophore
shimmers   shimmers   shimmers. I bite, dissolving skins.
Parasite, I atrophy to gonads: deepsea
love for my common black devil, my humpback.

Stuart Barnes

Nan's budgerigar,
cat fed squeezing like the morning
fog between oxidized barbed
wire and gorse
with an older cousin
with a slug gun

booting sheep skulls
stripped by gusts, our fathers'
1950s snares swooped by plovers,
daring: 'yellow spurs! forearms
up!' shooting star-
lings for laughs

another exhausted afternoon:
a hotted-up Torana: another burnout
to Warrant, to Poison
footy, swimming, cricket
on Pop's prized green, putting
with the wrong kind of club

transfixed by sixpence-
riddled heads hooked over the wash-
board another hand of Patience
and Snap! the glass swan
brimming with owl-red water
numb on mother-of-pearl veneer

lake one more theft—
a short-finned eel, writhing
and crackling—from the Esk
squeal of cast iron frying
pans slaps on the back each mouth-
ful of muddy flesh foreign to a South-

erner   on each empty double bed
a leering toilet roll
doll   full moon, mid-
night's deer-sprint to the outdoor
loo   the top bunk's hexagonal wiring sprung,
the mattress oozing through the cells like honey

Stuart Barnes

From his ebony eyrie
the moon is salubrious,
round as the white lotus' root.
The desert's his adversary.

The moon is salubrious
with his godly left eye.
The desert's his adversary,
spiteful, like a hippopotamus.

With his godly left eye
the moon is neither ossuary,
nor spiteful, like a hippopotamus,
a shape-shifting crocodile.

The moon is not an ossuary.
The desert is a troglodyte,
a shape-shifting crocodile.
The moon's a fresh apothecary,

the desert is a troglodyte.
From his ebony eyrie
the moon's a fresh apothecary,
round as the white lotus' root.

Stuart Barnes

ironing the crease into her lung with your breath
the six words in end steam over blue charcoal in her eye

your hands arrive in separate envelopes on different days
and they are addressed to each other

even the earth in its eyedropper is not medicine to our mouths
it's the milk dispensed through holes in a flute that keeps us alive

Mr & Mrs Emeritus explain on the hour that death is a democracy
and that our last vote counts towards nothing

this tear in her quilted lip is also a landscape
a sharp pencil probe into gloss flesh to rescue unconscious words

nowhere remains the last kiss before birth
a plagiarised soul copied in perpetuity until it (is) the original

this is where we stand to watch fate giving birth to doors
in an unpopulated administration always open because it is always closed

at night the surveyor marks new graves with luminous spit
in day the ground shrugs its smile from a sleep-platoon of obedient rectangles

walls quiver in this orbiting box that holds a planet
bends in to bend out under pressure from every animal breath

reduced to two people we are each one half of the world
the equator the solitary vein that ties us at our waist

(or) we could take the black bars from an equals sign
and each break the other's neck to demonstrate true love

it's easy to swap the flour for the dust when making blood cake
the bits we eat of each other make us whole

i am never asked because i am not the answer
but bees land in your ears to enter the hive

submerged in a bath tub full of honey we applaud our impossible action
what can't be heard and what can't be imagined (is) what's in front of us

this is our chance to perform an encore to two empty chairs
eight legs without fangs still immobilised by venom from separation

we crack light bulbs under our armpits by the dozen
to make sure we can't see where we are

we set three owls on fire every eight hours
so we can see where we're going

these deep pockets we had tailored into our thighs
will allow us to hang on to our femurs when we crash

in an emergency the glass in your fingernails will break
touch the first alarm from which we evacuate the skin

and memory thrown into still water can supress its sound
overhaul emanation to reverse ripples in from the outer edge

this page is a ghost expecting to be haunted by its signature
black marks that repeat the surface into a white choir of denial

form is a lonely banker too wealthy to be seen
standing on your shoulders lining up the coin with the slot to not let it go

unbelieved as feathers to a head suddenly account their embezzled sky
drawn back & forth the horizon saws our self-conception in two

side-by-side-head-to-toe-holding-hands covered in fresh colostrum
we lie in a giant wound and wait for an absence to feed on (or) reject one body

Nathan Shepherdson

Unexpected on a day like this—
sun shuttling through the 125th Street bridge,
plastic strung in Harlem's elms like tattered wreaths:
unseasonable, unreasonable spring.
Under the red shadow of the Grant tenements
lunchtime noshers clatter china at Bettolona,
dogwalkers spread out on the grass in Sakura Park,
men from the halfway home
drag their deckchairs into the street.
Someone has left a string of Christmas lights
blinking a tired morse on the windowsill.
Someone has forgotten something.
Something is forgotten.
So take the phone off the hook;
pour another drink.
No point in worrying about anything.
No point worrying.
Then, suddenly, clear sky snow
in a cold confetti over the Hudson.
A silent tickertape, that huge white falling
over the sidewalks and taxis,
laundromats, bodegas, outpost libraries.
Is this how the news will arrive
of my father's death?
Settling lightly over the heads of pedestrians
as they hurry from the subway
in black goosedown coats,
evaporating before it even touches their hair
but bowing down, again and again, to the ground.

Sarah Holland-Batt

How fine it is to mutiny
against my tired mind—

say self, you are through,
to smash into a mirrorball

of echoes all scaled
in dizzying Nordic blue

feel the universe tilt
and infinitely rebuild

to flicker
like a skerrick of spindle silver

needle-quick,
and never be held—

this is the freedom
of the unilluminated world

where corals pulse
in the dark like deathstars, unmoved,

and leaflets of seagrass
witter in the fracas and fray

of elfin shrimp
and the forays of smolts and eels,

and I can forever surf
not between places but selves,

scavenging the ultramarine layers
for other lures, other lives.

Sarah Holland-Batt

no one ha
s ever written
there is no gr
eater poem
than this one

no one ha
s ever written
there is no gr
eater poem
then this one

this poem
was complete
until you decide
d to read it

this is what
australian p
oetry looks like
after the fire bu
t before all the
trees were pu
t back in the
landscape b
efore all the
trees were pu
t back in this p
oem

i am the
only poet i
have ever kn
own who ne
eded to write
this

everythin
g i have ev
er known w
as in this
sentence unt
il i decide
d to remov
e it

every conceivab
le object not y
et conceived i
n the word o
bject is what
you should ob
ject to tireless
ly until the p
un is entirel
essly defeated

motion carried

this poem is t
o show I AM
capable of us
ing imagery
in a poem bu
t not in a pain
ting

) / l ( \ l (|\
/) ( | ( /l\ )
| \ )|\) | /(
( l | l(|/) / l
))\/|/ ( /)(|
these are n
ot the sam
e trees no
t used in a
different a
ustralian po
em

he should ne
ver be left al
one until he i
s by himsel
f then he is
everyone

if there are w
orse poems th
an this one i
would like to r
ead them beca
use i know t
here are no w
orse poems ju
st better read
ers

i have never mu
rdered anyone i d
id not know whe
n they were ali
ve knowing this
you are the nex
t victim the ne
w suspect the las
t murderer of all s
elves

when i was you
ng i used to sit
up the back and
throw full stops a
t all the philosop
hers trying to wa
tch movies abou
t themselves

what earnestne
ss i would declin
e when sucking
on the last win
g to brush your
heart into its thin
nest medium

when mirrors chan
ge their shirts we un
button ourselves

it is importa
nt not to writ
e too much ot
herwise you end
up writing poe
ms like this on
e

less is moor sai
d the boat befo
re it sank

ha ha being t
he first two ha
lves of half

as jesus ties y
our last breath
to his lips he g
ets to inhale the
albumen from y
our eyes still car
twheeling to the fr
ont gate of all im
ages sent off with
a cut lunch & a fr
esh translation whe
re nothing waits f
or you to open the
same door captiv
e inside a diamo
nd cut light bulb
that never worke
d

that was your la
st chance to unde
rstand this

now the world ha
s to wait until i
t can end witho
ut you

i will note th
is then as a r
efusal to accept
this volatile m
ass of thinkin
g as opposed to
your usual narr
ative in which
one person say
s something to an
other person befor
e they turn awa
y and walk off
in opposite direc
tions

now i will pu
t the word en
d in this poe
m to show thi
s is not the be
ginning

Nathan Shepherdson

—for Vera Pavlova, in Mexico City

On the bus to Teotihuacan, we turn
a new god's name on our tongues

like a charm, jagging past
cinderblocked hills

chocked over the motorway,
grey pixels stacked so high they merge

with the smoked white Mexican sky—
then a guitar player in the aisle

begins a song whose only familiar
word is corazon, we move on, billboards

graffitied Narco Estado scream by,
and I think of the jostling in the plaza

last night during the Ayotzinapa strike,
candled light salving poster faces

of the missing, and wonder
whether there is a god

who bothers to bless those who travel
on buses, not only those who scale

blunt steep steps of pyramids
where the world bends to an untenable angle

as if to say, kneel, human,
your heart isn't enough—

give me your life.

Sarah Holland-Batt

Recording

Bebop sparkplug spurred in withershins,
loop-de-loop interloper, he hop-steps
ravines of bark, shirking faultlines,
going solo, headstrong, scion of impatience,
juddering like the stalled engine
of prop-plane on tundra runway, skirting
and skimming up, peeling out,
reeling in spiral, spy, scout, prematurely
thrusting into the unknown, Magellan
running aground on an idea of home,
small caravel listing on lateen sails
then surging helical in staccato, rounding
each horizon in horror of what lies behind,
long a believer of earth-as-cylinder,
denier of his long scroll of crimes,
smiter of pseudoscorpions and mites,
he scours the lonely atolls under cover of snow,
dreaming of Cape Verde and the Canary Islands,
forewarned of the way death arrives, ahead of his time,
the age of discovery sinking out of sight
in the forest's surge and slide.

Sarah Holland-Batt

I.

You tilt lapis to your lip –
a day light as wicker.

By the water, bullrushes bow
into sailboat blue, lace-necked

egrets fossick and pick,
and the elements rearrange

a goliath heron's skull to mud.
Up on the embankment

a crouching child scratches
his name into a temple wall.

II.

Ultramarine, lapis lazuli—
today it seems possible to boil

queens to bone and paint,
unlike our childhood saints

whose vigils never cease,
whose faces do not age.

Feluccas rock in afternoon sun,
yellow licks of light hammer

the Nile to scattered scale.
In a valley near Thebes, antique heads

suffocate in starless catacomb,
linen figure-eighting the face,

jewel blue basting the eyelids,
the last cold smears of sky.

III.

A sprint of sandpipers
on mudflats, a low hammock.

Thought flakes away.
History is a headless dog

on the road to Karnak
where a tribe of sparrows

excavate the bones
of old sparrows, digging

in the mortar for a home.
Buried in the stucco there

you might find a blue splinter,
a figure for a mortal skull.

Sarah Holland-Batt

Right at the back of the world's yard I am sitting. I have nothing.
I had a stone but lent it to the poet to put in his shoe. No sooner
did he turn into a slim golden feather that flew straight to the
sun that fed the snakes new skins. It could as easily have
resulted in ripe figs resting in baskets or unruly persimmon
trees twirling in fogged mountains. Regardless, I have nothing. I
had a stone but it was just an essay I wrote once about staying
with one's shadow.

MTC Cronin

Recording

'The World's Yard' begins at 1:37

Above us we hear the windmill yelping, circling like a trapped
dog while the house sits like a black skull on the hill. Above us
the tombs are rising from their rest and travelling along the
roads beneath trees turning sourly. Above us the wind flings
uncountable seed into the dignified light tossed through the
depths by a green moon rolling over and over in the shifting
lens of the waves. Above us nakedness stretches forever
against danger, ravishment and smoke. When we wake our
lives are on fire. Above us only our sleepy souls drifting like
reeds catching the air.

MTC Cronin

Recording

'Above Us' begins at 0:45

Time falls out
of your house

and onto a slab
of lucerne which

the cows eat as
they wander away

from the orchard's
long flowing hour.

Sweet and full
of wild honey

is the flower
is the bird.

Part of your love
is timeless enough

says the little track
left by ants.

MTC Cronin

Recording

'Little Track' begins at 0:45

The correct way to drink from a broken cup.
To welcome both dark and light into your house.
To imagine tomorrow.
To pick verbena and red clover.
On the path where nothing will grow.

The correct way to tend the frozen.
To take their sweet throats and swim down into their livers.
To disembowel without touching.
To do what is at stake.
To move from cage to cage.

The correct way to say only some things worth saying.
To recognize the world's mark.
(The shape of conception.)
To feed an apple.
To bruise.

The correct way to close your lips.
To keep a promise.
To remember.
And then, to die in a room.
Or out in the open.

MTC Cronin

Recording

'The Correct Way' begins at 1:44

Moon is a paper lamp
burning all night.

The grass
is full of shadows.

Hardly room in here
with the cupboard's coat.

Small broken windows
open dream's row.

The wild birds
all leave my mind at once –

mouth banging shut
in the dark.

'The grass is full
of blue free stars.'

The universe just means
nothing gets left out.

MTC Cronin

Recording

'The Grass is Full' begins at 1:11

The things us Murri blackfellas have to go over in life's
Futures is hard.
Love's gone bad and less money and work.
This easy going one got the flour tea sugar our mothers and fathers worked for.
We were black men before the lot say, Ah ah, what's colour got to do with it?
Well the light comes from the dark.
May our babies never forget the black men who washed clean and were kind on the began.
The things we men went into were hard but changes were seen.
Now we sit as if space chases around our necks and our hands have no arts.
To sell the spirit of the good dance we get nothing in going on.
To let sin overtake our wind wins we will never bow down.
Most Murri today are national
Yes we do know the borders
But our unity is we knew this before they told us.
Ambition black red and gold men come forward now take us
In songs of love and fighter rights.

Lionel Fogarty

Beyond a man's face stands a skilful
         Command of changes
Beyond a woman's face stands a weep
       Over the sweet peace beauty
Borrowed emerging naked rage
      Made these times emptiness
Being at the advancing haunts came
The hunter's stamping leaps
I sat down around a necessity of food
Have painted movements
History of sympathy was wet on the bloody vultures
The future corroboree is spirits burning eagerly awaiting
Now levering voices are heard by morning happing roos
As roof of rain swayed the trees, to bring new roots
Colours of fires busted forms so the children of the worlds
Can be spirituality of lights
But the gathered up rubbish heap more beyond the who cares
Men's mouths were sew and tightened
Women spare their wiped air
No commands were given
Between places beyond the spaces in times

Lionel Fogarty

They swing on real dreams of freedom.
Peace is like things of the past.
Justice is like ice on the lands never seen.
The dream he had was his own.
For he got pay for his speech.
People now can't dream in positive.
For money to dream became working to scream.
Years went by things same lay at the beds and rooms.
Pain anger injustices seem to be their lifelong dreams.
Love was politic in houses called freedoms.
The mountains come down to a city for romancing.
See all colour together was now price on hope to hop.
We never lived by that dream cause times changed for those
of power over powers.
But the poor stayed lying as homeless mixed over and over.
What war stopped since the fighter began?
What paper written was heard when light covering was dark to the bones?
The world better was for that time nothing became a future.
It was a policy statement nothing more or for people.
We had a dream now where is the time for that dream?
Where are the human dreams if we so true to the dreams about us all in all?

Lionel Fogarty

The need to recall the journey
Is her gift to her children?

They are the perfect journalists
To inscribe her tombstone

Outside my bedroom window
I see them walking the path to my door

Who understands the logic?
That they look so much like me

Meanwhile what a lousy deal
They will also in heart my life

This heat reminds me of a certain freedom
Is hell the detour to heaven?

Until our bones prevent us
From dodging an eternal life

I wonder if she even spoke to God?
The bird that sits in the tree outside my window

A thousand rivers, collided and changed direction
Within my chest
I realise there is much more journey to be done

Lionel Fogarty

She was pretty young Borobi being put in the tree by her human father for four hours.

As he walk back to the other Jarjum, they ask where Borobi was. He say, Oh she jump
into a tree wanting to eat leaves and looked like happy, so I let her be what she wanted
to be, a Borobi.

Many Bilin Bilin flirted around flying high and low seems like listen to old Kargaru sing
a song for a birth.

While on the lily pads waters the Taran was loud yell help in crooker ways.

But the Nyunga Nyunga was signing a dance to attract Wogun wogun to give tosh
tongue to the air of life that was in tree. But young Borobi kept on moving from tree to
branches being a Queen of the top, this time doped up she fell out of the tree, just in time
for her dad Binga to hold her in his arms, say she be alright and will sleep tonight.

That young Borobi found her pretty face changed.

She sang, they are my people the birds animal around I loved the four hours forever.

Now the story is Borobi had many Jarjums after this, the tree got bigger than all her
friends.

Now the story is never go into a tree for a long time cause you can be missed.

Lionel Fogarty

Bilin Bilin: king parrot
Kargaru: kookaburra
Taran: frog
Nyunga Nyunga: bower bird
Wogun wogun: scrub turkey

for Aunty Nancy Bamaga

rising sea
takes and
breaks into backyards
to trouble families

we cannot live
with the seas in our bellies
we cannot rest
with the sea at our legs

the tide
is coming
to stroke
our dead

we want to know
who unplugged
our island
of childhood

island
of love and tradition
let them see
what has gone under

Ellen van Neerven

Recording

Can I say
white people really bore me sometimes
to be exact
I grow tired with what's unmentioned
idling in surf club bathrooms
nothing wrong with the chips
but they're talking about Tasmania
my thoughts haunted by islands
maybe I'm dying
I've too many chips
teeth like stones
take me to be flossed
and cleaned
I need new soles
sticking to the floor
what is happening
with the dialogue of this country
they are killing people with words
if I'm not back soon
tell them I've had
too many chips

Ellen van Neerven

Recording

Suck until you burn the room
and the heat numbs
reduced to a sound
wet
like the come and go
of the ocean
water enters
my hand in your hair
my hand
if you leave me childless
this will be yours alone
these marks you make
openings, persuasions
of the woman I will become

Ellen van Neerven

Recording

It seems I'm always walking
into the scene of a crime
moustached copper
and fuck-off tape
don't look too closely
you won't be able to sleep
I'm new to this building
I live now by the river where
the ducks look like shoes
in the water
I go to the department store
we used to frequent
I look at grocery receipts
to see how I'm saving
and sometimes I get so lonely
I can barely stand it
tonight I wanted you
like the rain wanted the streets
my building was one of two
struck by lightning
a chunk off the top
spilt bricks on the road
I am marked
drop a Google pin into my heart
like they say in Alice
when the Todd floods
this must mean I'm staying

Ellen van Neerven

Recording

The ground felt like it did when it's about to storm. My feet were brown and my big toe blistered. My grandmother was talking to my grandfather. A wet patch on my grandmother's back. Her hands roping those tails along the fence.

She turned to me and I saw her. Grey. A little heavy. Everything I came here for. A magpie flew lower.

Ellen van Neerven

Recording

the black hand of Badia Elmi corrected and cropped

Nathan Shepherdson

Recording

Stuart Barnes UQP smaller Stuart Barnes was born in Hobart in 1977; Gwen Harwood befriended him in the late-1980s. Since 2013 he has been poetry editor for Tincture Journal. In 2014 he was named runner-up in the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and co-judged the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards: Poetry. In 2015 Glasshouses (University of Queensland Press, 2016) won the Thomas Shapcott Prize and he performed at Queensland Poetry and Brisbane Writers Festivals at the invitation of their directors. His poems have been published widely, anthologised, exhibited, and shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2009 and 2010.

States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

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Further reading and links

States of Poetry

Recordings

Further reading and links

States of Poetry

Recordings

Further reading and links

States of Poetry

Further reading and links

States of Poetry

Recordings

Further reading and links

States of Poetry

Recording

Further reading and links