Tim Wright lives in Melbourne in a house backing onto a train line. The poems for this issue were written in the south west of Western Australia and are part of a longer series.
From a tank of water to a cup of coffee. ‘Mistral duet’ (toaster). Panasonic. A group called Save Our Suburbs: ‘I think we need to work to address the main concerns.’ An elderly couple at the door with copies of Watchtower, husband and wife, more or less out for a chat. Do I believe that science and the Bible are compatible? The different light of a Saturday. Phana-sonic? Turn the radio down too low to understand.
Nationalism is always bubbling away somewhere. That which is of academic interest. Acts of language. Electronic grizzle, ‘dubby’. Increasing the value of the easily available. Apparently what it’s all about. Black pencil. Turn on water and wonder. Printed out poems now Things to Do lists. Inside a house in Australia, learning the language of France. Cough with confidence and continue speaking. Cracking cans on the porch. Those interesting times of sobriety, like a metallic token collected in the tray of a machine. Stretch your legs.
Boxes in the landscape. The assumptions of architecture. A different beach. The longer a trend takes to reach one. The grimy inner city becomes an idea. Patterns of light through the curtains. The Bolaño effect. Packets of mud. The relatively recent feels distant, yesterday six months. Amnesty. Lines from The Simpsons. Flip book. Guy Maddin’s ‘My Winnipeg’. A Grammarian could be an alien. ‘I can’t even begin to think of that yet’. A missing bracket, bed made of earth.
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Compression: the shape of an animal running. ‘My mind was elsewhere’. Some thing, with other things pressed into it. A warehouse. Crushed leaves and bad posture. Or reaching between leaves to take something back. Respiration: an engine turning over. Next door, not communicated. A temporary cenotaph. I had never seen a swarm of bees before, pouring into itself like that. And the sky incites an exclamation. Browsing as methodology. Cable car.
Toxic green. The sense of expectation, when walking very early in the morning, that one is always just about to encounter a body. Inhale through a turbine. A senile blue. The dream washes over the framework. Bend over backwards. Catch the train somewhere new. A place one was once questioned. Heavy ankle length skirt. Manufactured reply. Dessicated branch, place it in the freezer. Dramatic postcard. Not the work but what the work implies.
Bust wrapped in cellophane; diaphanous transcript. Are we becoming a nation of wimps? A jug of beer carried carefully across a room. Luminous sweepings, staple remover. Drumming on gathered materials. A casual eclipse, seen from behind. Opinion columnist; common irritant. Chain of Ponds Road, western New South Wales. Let the nostalgia run its course. ‘Chromatose’. Having driven through applause. A book, a beam. A drinking song, not easily brushed off. Walking on forest floor. Rushed through a hospital. Darkish glint.