FIVE POEMS BY PAM BROWN
The southern of someplace
is an
uncullable guide book,
others bunged
into a grimy
skip
out the back
at the besser
brick mall
the narcolept's
flat out
rough guide
open
drooping hand
'the desert
begins
just beyond the
suburb'
broken hill,
nice type
poliphilus
roman
blado italic,
C15th &
C16th
respectively.
night stars
appear
like the future
like little
cysts
like dandruff
dust.
my sister's
interstices
muttering,
muddled,
yet methodical,
hungover,
self-conscious,
caught in a
laugh trap,
frowning,
shuffling,
never standing
still,
splinters under
skin
a real busy
fidget
going places
on the down
escalator
passing
everyone going up
(from 'Home by
Dark' published by Shearsman Books, 2013)
All fuelled out
watercolour's a
riddle, the city
fucked-up &
not like Paris,
watery suburbs
as watery depictions,
like a Raoul
Dufy biscuit box lid
or Emil Nolde
slumped over chips,
pommes frites to the ornamental bugger
who pecks and
putts his flirty air kisses
towards your
coral aquarelles.
doodling on the
bubbled backs
of soaked-off
claret labels, sunk
into a bucket
of silence.
(from 'Home by
Dark' published by Shearsman Books, 2013)
Desired outcome
'anywhere out
of the world'
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
I woke up
in an episode of Tremé Series 3,
but I could
hear
i Muvrini's Corsican songs
in the distance
mineral
turpentine
clinging to my cilia -
sticky door frame, sticky sills
I had forgotten
the half-an-onion
fume
deterrent
~
Rimbaud is 160
years old,
meanwhile
everything is going
on
opening the
door
to a ghost &
his boxes -
old books with discoloured edges -
he never looked
better just last year
on his album cover
dropped in the
hallway,
gone
~
in
general,
it's great to hear
what learned people say
without doing any prior reading,
it's a vacation, really
what learned people say
without doing any prior reading,
it's a vacation, really
~
I adore your
think tank
but I need the recycling service
really quickly
~
for a limited
time only,
that's the
offer
if you want to sleep soundly,
lulled,
as they say
Not really ready
biscuits, near
stale,
five a.m.
fog lies around
like shower steam
an ambulance
siren
sets off
some cooped up dogs
~
brushing the
polish
like dad
preening
his immaculate uniform
for bivouac
~
sleepwalking
into
mineral wars
columbite &
tantalite,
we love you
~
brochure difficulties
I'm not really ready for
~
Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima
no plan
to visit
sickly fields
weed,
burr
& clover
synthetic zeolite
useless
~
where
butterflies mutate
~
fog lifts,
start the engine
Feed the orchid
says the note
near the radio,
tuning in to
New Weird
Australia,
dangle a tea
bag
into a mug,
anticipate
sound sounds
experiment,
montage,
batteries flat,
dance on
nothing,
have to go
suck a stone
instead.
measuring up
sight unseen
sound unheard,
dogged
continuum -
swallow the
algae,
long for the
moss,
fondle the
root,
a wasp hovers
over a corn
cob,
wasp or bee?
makes me think
of Maeterlinck,
Count Maurice
Maeterlinck,
his second name
was Polydore,
original
in countless
ways -
his never-made
Metro Goldwyn
Mayer
movie based on
'The Life of
the Bee'.
is this a
sappy nature
poem?
notate
imperilled
imperilling
plants,
vanishing
insects,
the superseded
cochineal
beetle.
missing
grasses,
what weed
is that ?
too bad about
the prickly
pear.
(from 'Home by
Dark' published by Shearsman Books, 2013)
*****
Pam Brown was born in Victoria, Australia. She grew up on military bases
in Queensland and has spent her adult life living and working in Sydney. She has published seventeen books, ten chapbooks, and an e-book:
most recently, Home by Dark
(Shearsman Books, 2013). A bilingual
French-English edition of her poems, Alibis,
(translated by Jane Zemiro) was published by Société Jamais-Jamais in 2014.
She has been an editor for Overland,
Jacket, Jacket2, PennSound, is currently a contributing editor for Fulcrum and VLAK and in 2014 she edited ten new poetry titles - the 'deciBels'
series - for Vagabond Press. She blogs occasionally at
thedeletions.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment