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States of Poetry 2016

1.

To enter the bed we kneel
And fall into the white abyss.
Sleep is a form of fainting
The altar of the pillows swirls with wisps
Of fading consciousness – a priest
Comes down the aisle flicking dreams out
From an ancient ewer.

2.

Watch a sleeping man
Even then they still seem awesome
To me with an air of tragedy
Like a fal ...

You ought to ring up
The farm may have disappeared
Into the river – as it does from time to time –
Or the trees in the orchard bloomed with stars
Or the geese may have rowed
in the blue dinghy adorned with hundreds
of marigolds to the island
with six of them sitting straight up
on the bench, the other two heaving an oar
while the rooster watches ...

I was the dressmaker's daughter
our dialogue was fabric, colour,
embroidery, pins and scissors.
The almost silent sound
of snipped cloth falling
on the table round my feet.

A bodice of pins drew down
over my head like a scaffold.
I spent my childhood in the sea
or standing on a table – 'A sway back!'
she said proudly.
Once I wore a tab ...

is the poem nonchalant enough to reference sufjan stevens :
or is he, too, passé : it's a poem in the same key
as his chicago : piped in to the auditory cortex : a private music :
that the world resounds with : the city resonates
from the inside : lights light up in unison : traffic stops

& starts : office-buildings with a swagger to their stillness :

a beetle enamoured with my lamp : a harbinger
of spring : as if the tree blossoming
on the footpath opposite was not enough :
or the budding persimmon : or the bottlebrush flowers
i didn't notice until today : there's evidence of spring :
in abundance : the enduring dusk : that's holding
still : days that are shifting south : subtly :
to an alternate frame of ...

A day in parallax – duco-blue –
a crop of borrowed gold,
in focus, replete –

fibrous stems of light, agitated,
and, over them, the bales
of cloud dispersing.

The motor ticking
long after it is silenced.
And the impulse it honours: this.

 

Thom Sullivan

...

after Paul Muldoon's 'Why Brownlee Left'

Where Brownlee went, and why he went,
is no mystery – Brady's bar.
And if a man should have fixed intent
it was him; two shots of whiskey,
one of Bushmills, one of Redbreast,
a cheer and a slab for the house.
He was then seen going out to piss
in the March morning, sure and surly.

I wonder what happens
in Seb's kitchen, I see
him round the corner
into the room, sun shining, cat
ready for food, a grin
that is mixed of resignation
& amusement eyes alight
for the opportunity
each day brings. I always
liked the way he understood
things – things I've
never understood –
as an open secret, knowledge
with w ...

We've been in mourning just over a year,
or just under, depending on the date we're marking.
Not always celebrations, anniversaries
have a way of keeping their appointments:
they're ticked off at the level of the body
and brain, our biochemical wakes.

I've felt strange all week, sick and sleep-obsessed,
a willed agoraphobic. Show me the cave
I need to ...

someone is leaving a plane and feeling the city wrap around them again. the atmosphere, it is always heavy around here. what that means is that it's humid. within the person there is an internal battle, then there is a decision, then there is action. while the consequences of the action play out, crickets play and not even in the background. the sound rises and all of a sudden it feels like the ...