Growth

Medusa Sea Star
braids already-there
hair.  She weaves more.

Swallowtail knits
a stomach to eat
the self it forgets.

It's not how you build it, so long as you build it.

Singularity (revision)

Stuart glued electrodes to his scalp
in preparation for the Great Upload.
He crammed his hard drive
full of blueprints for a cyborg city:
turbines, turrets, turbo tanks.

When the slime moulds took over,
they soaked his laptop in digestive goo.
You’re being emotional!
he shrieked at a plasmoid,
which slithered up his torso
and into his ear.
He tried to scream again in Esperanto
but the fruiting bodies had occluded his airway,
and it was becoming difficult to think.

How to Look After Yourself

New message.  Is it you?  I wish.  It's spam
from my mother: Rape Prevention Tips.

I check the news: Transgender Woman Murdered.
Twenty-two, and shot outside a party.

I worry.  Wish you'd come back from D.C.
If I were Mom, I'd send you Pointers for
Avoiding Murder: Guaranteed to Work.

1. Don't date men.
                                2. Don't let people know.
3. Get a German shepherd.  Get an uzi.
4. Dress in kevlar.
                              5. Invent a ray gun.
6. Dream big. Become a constellation.

Pigeon

Hey babe
head bob
ruff puff
wing fluff
shimmer shimmy
twirl
crr-ooo
crr-ooo

Luck

Everything is possible in this most possibleof worlds.  Roll enough dice, and miracles look probable.

The miracle of winter fruit: although you miss
the strawberries, the custard apples fruit in May.

The fridge has fizzled out.  Is this a bolt of fortune?
We'll throw a potluck, drink condensed milk from the can.

Cleaning out the attic, under old Reader's Digests,
you find a diary, half-eaten by the must.

You strain your arms until the screw-top jar flies straight
into the wall, and stand blinking at your own might.

Really, Rachael? You expect to twist a cloud
into cotton candy? Hell, who knows?  I could.

Breathing Lessons

It's like riding a bike or swimmingup from your own green throat.
Remember to say ahem.
People will think you're serious.

Nobody chokes to death
on cough drops and sweet green tea,
smothers from too much doona,
gags over menthol steaminess.

Blood returns to the empty ghost

I sang so sweet the gods returned him,snatched the corpse and dropped my brother
blinking in the stunning sunlight.

My tears ran dry. I'd sobbed and sung and
beat my voicebox, banged my lyre
so loudly that the gods returned him,

tugged their tangled plaything, bent him
back to human shape, tossed back their
captive frog, unhooked their sunfish.

Chop the line and throw the sinker
deep into the river. Never
hook his heart again. Return him

tall and whole. Unchoke, undrown him;
bind him to his breath forever;
fill the year with Easter Sundays.

Pluto, stop. I hear you stringing
fishing line onto your spinner.
You cannot, having once returned him,
haul him from the gasping sunlight.

Australia's Big Things (revision)

Paul Bunyip whipped in on a whistling hurricane,cut through the sweat of our Brisbane December,
rained on our dumplings and sent us all hurrying
back from the yard where we steam them in summer.

We were panting in hammocks behind the verandah,
wringing hot water drops out of the air.
We'd battered the passionfruit back from the windows,
whacked the white ants with a fizzling whirr.

Then Bunyip whooped in on his whinnying hurricane.
Raindrops and hailstones blew straight through the cockatoos,
nailed them to gumtrees.  They shrieked something horrible,
screech upon scream til the airwaves were chockers.

The rain stopped, and up sprouted apples and pineapples,
mangoes, bananas as tall as the sky
in Batlow and Berri, in Bowen and Yerrinbool,
Gympie, Bulimba, Coff's Harbour, Mackay.


(original)

American Sentence, Moon Edition

The SuperBall at the cusp of Highgate Hill rockets toward outer space.

Australia's Big Things

On the miserable February afternoon
when Paul Bunyip galloped in on a hurricane,
we were reaching above our heads, squeezing the air,
letting the warm water drip onto our foreheads.
The squall drove raindrops through the lorikeets,
nailed them to trees and fenceposts, and ruined the dumplings
we'd left outside to steam.

By the time Paul clapped the hurricane on the flank
and sent it whinnying back to the wild Pacific,
the only thing you could see above the mud
was the tip of Stephan's Needle.
Paul tied sponges to the feet of his blue heeler Babe,
threw a stick til the whole mess was mopped up.
He offloaded three of the sponges in Katoomba
and threw one in the desert.

“I'm thirsty,” said Paul,
pulling a ten-thousand gallon stubbie out of his pocket.
“And hungry.”  After cleaning out our flapjacks
and fruit salad, Paul sprinkled around some seeds
he'd bought from a young man with a cow.
Up sprouted bananas, oranges, mangos, apples
bigger than Babe's head.  He ate most, but left a few
in Berri, Bowen and Yerrinbool, Carnavon and Coff's Harbour
Tenterfield and Thulimbah, and Mundubbera and Mackay.

32. Google search poem

Your title is a phrase or quote you put into Google with inverted commas around it. The poem should be made of whatever comes after the title in the results. You don’t have to use every result or use a particular order; you can be selective! [I have cheated by taking snippets from the results, and doing a bit of mashing up as far as line breaks and punctuation go.]

I'm sick of

pretending.
I don't “get” the cultural implications of male facial presentation.
Following the rules and doing what I'm “supposed” to do in life,
cultural awareness ringing in my ears,
are troublesome ideas to me.

I'm sick of all the insincere activists who talk like:
Hey Bob, call the whaambulance:
he doesn't feel like he “owns” his mega-hit anymore.

I've spent the last 15 years
skinny and popular like all the other guys.
I hate how you treat your girly friends.
Dressing like women doesn't make you special?
It makes me happy.

You think I'm kidding?
Sexist vermin.
One day, our computers will have their sentient revenge
and cling to your body like a wet cotton dress.

31. Advice for Newbies

Don't aim too high.  Remember you suck a lot.
Your journal's dull.  You whinge and say fuck a lot.
You're not permitted to steer the scansion;
treat all devices with apprehension.

One draft should take at least half a century.
Don't push it.  If you're feeling adventure-y
just shove the thing in a drawer and lock it.
Pour some cement in the keyhole socket.

The critter's job is murder and massacre.
If bleeding, death, or pain-in-the-ass occur,
don't spank the critter the way they spank you.
Note that the proper response is thank you.

Can you look grave and maintain decorum?
Then welcome!  Come in and enjoy the forum.

30. Toothfish: Epilogue

He's just the same, but bigger, greener.
She rubs his back.  At last they're home.
Their pub is growing. Critics gloat:

those sumptuous roasts that fill your throat,
oaky, smoky; karaoke
Friday nights; a hundred drinks!

just off the eastern coast of Greece.

29. Toothfish: Shipwreck

Hello to Greece!  The eastern coastline
waves and winks at Gretchen's ship
through gouts of rain.  Stone cliffs rise ghostlike
from the storm.  She bobs and dips
and whacks a rock.  The hull rips open.
The sea's a Scylla: gaping, gulping
hunks of crew.  It swings and knocks
our heroine onto the rocks.
While Scylla barks, she shakes and chatters
but hangs on tight.  Her grip is sharp
to match the rocks.  She starts to slip
when something capers through the breakers—
a shape that chitters... is that... Liszt?—
more great and green than any fish.

28. Toothfish: He's Sick of Being Back

He's tired.  He's drunk the blood of hundreds,
left a trail of empty hulls
from port to port.  The ships he's plundered
open their entrails to the gulls.
So many dead, and still no mobsters.
He's through with men.  He'll switch to lobsters,
become a chef and stuff his days
with lobscouse, bisque, and bouillabaisse.
His skin still stings with steel, still itches
where fragmentary fishhooks hack
the heavy leather of his back,
but now he's done.  Goodbye to scratches!
Goodbye harpoons! Goodbye police!
Hello the eastern coast of Greece!

27. Toothfish: Scientific Potential

Gretchen's turned out okey-dokey,
says her dad.  Her fishy phase
is finished.  Now she studies ocean
archeology.  She'll raise
a wreck next year, complete her thesis.
Tough girl.  She's picking up the pieces
of some ancient Grecian vase.
Staring at the shards, she says
nothing.  There's a black glaze monster
gazing from the shattered clay
with one red eye.  Far off, the sea
cries out. Her heartbeat roars an answer.
She'll find him if she has to sink
a hundred miles in the drink.

26. Toothfish: He'll Be Back

He's in a swamp.  A hellish throat-ache
burns our hero gill to gill,
and fury stabs him like a hot stake.
He'll shish-kebab them on his grill
for what they've done.  They stole his Gretchen,
gouged his throat, but soon... his fish-grin
halves a hapless crocodile.
He veers and steers the muddy mile
toward the river—blackish, brackish,
lined with bracken fern.  His jaw
is tough enough to shear clean through
the shinbones of his foes.  He's peckish.
The turbid water masks his glow.
He snarls and turns toward Tokyo.

25. Toothfish: Sabotage

At night, he grows: the pale green glowworm
of the sea, the mutant bass
from Mars.  His bulk abrades the glass
and when he shifts, the shockwaves flow from
tank to table, rise and ripple
til the beams and floorboards wiggle.
Her mother begs her: please forget
your fish.  Adopt some normal pet:
a bonsai tree? a snail? a puppy?
Her father, more proactive, hires
a mobster who, with sheaves and wires,
slyly garottes the goofed-up guppy.
He claims the fish has gone to romp
the hills.  He throws it in the swamp.

24. Toothfish: Their Burgeoning Friendship

She grabs her schoolbag, brings him homework
(which he eats), and plays him Liszt,
explaining keenly—"listen, Fish"—
how hammers, keys, and metronomes work.
He could bust through glass, through bands of
stainless steel and bite her hands off,
but when Gretchen reaches in
to scritch his fins, he purrs and grins.
They share bag lunches, Twixes, Twizzlers,
invent code names.  Their secret call's
a theme from the Mephisto Waltz
conveyed in burps and chirps and twitters.
She sprouts up tall and tan.  He glows
pale green at night.  She grows. He grows.

23. Toothfish: Secret Sideshow

He's slight and matte as any old fish—
no swirly fins, no flashy scales—
but he's got tricks.  He'll vanish goldfish
and sever tetras tip-from-tail.
His teeth would rouse a fanfare somewhere
(Woods Hole, perhaps?) but at the funfair
he floats unmarked, a minor prize
for ping-pong ball, his garnet eyes
offset by eighty-seven eyeteeth.
Here comes Gretchen, six, to press
her luck.  She chucks the ball, and yes!
It splashes down on this awry-teeth
demon in a plastic dome.
She grabs the bag and brings him home.