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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780702257735 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 08/24/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 104 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Glasshouses
By Stuart Barnes
University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 2016 Stuart BarnesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5773-5
CHAPTER 1
Fingal Valley
Nan's budgerigar,
cat fed squeezing like morning
fog between oxidised barbed
wire and gorse
with an older cousin
and 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,
mattress oozing through cells like honey
The Moon and the Mason Jars
for Ruth Whebell
Purified in stainless stockpots
with black Italian cursives and gilt,
stuffed with smashed green cabbage, sea salt,
yoghurt's
whey; three-quarter revolutions compel
the Latin blanks. From elliptic orbit a well-
versed silver tongue assuages the dish rack's
topsy-turvy characters.
Ebon Cans
In the twinkling of an eye,
in a moment, all is changed
nbsp; &Gwen Harwood, 'Bone Scan'
In the twinkling of her eye, all is changed:
the small blond child afraid of almost every
thing — father, mother, himself especially —
but books, and paper and pen, awakens
in the vestry where, in four years, the lick
of the oily priest's hand against his thigh
will roil minds. In the twinkling of an eye
he'll coil at high school. 'Here's another — quick!
— stuff it in your pocket — it's so important.'
Blackout, blackout — here it comes — his father's
negativity. 'There's zero future
for you as mathematician, doctor.'
Such depths they charge; such queer laughter.
He glances over his shoulder. She mouths Write
13
Tzameti, lines to a rondeau, chapters in The Art
of War. Cards per suit, steps to the gallows, loaves in a
baker's dozen. Diners at the Last Supper, gods at
Valhalla's banquet, dismemberments of Osiris.
Studio LPs by The Cure, lunar months every
calendar year, primary members of The Thirteen
Club. Olives, olive leaves, arrows and stars on the Great
Seal of the United States. Players in a rugby
league team; teenagers starring in 13, the Broadway
musical; letters in Bixby, Oklahoma, the
city where Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters trilogy,
gripped by this troublous number, is set. Syllables till
the broken motif of this poem. Lucky for some.
n3 Poccnn
for Therese Stuart
Alitalia: hazy, like Nan & Pop's ... Rome: the taxis!
the cats! ... Moscow's gilt mocks, McDonald's', too:
one goddamn Big Mac "meal" = one month's wage!
... Fifty dead presidents for genuine black-market
sailor shirt: itch -y, made from wool ... Gypsies
nearly whoosh our bus in Pushkin ... Saint
Petersburg Karelia train star-red, ash-blond
scouts snooze like speechless speech marks ... Lake
Ladoga: icebox; MOSQUITOES; white nights be-
wilder Siberian cedars ... Kath & I boomerang to de-
mountables: 'Il y a un beau garçon là-bas': Ilya's
cheeks borscht-pink ... T's headphones: The Cure's
'Fire in Cairo' ... I [??] zh ... [begin strikethrough]Homesick
for Hobart[end strikethrough] ...
ValproateFluoxetineClonazepam
Every day four purple pills,
four laughing Smarties (cochineals
steamed, boiled, burned alive)
for disguise
a capsule, half ivory,
half peppermint (an elephant's
head severed, a plant's leaves,
flowers crushed) for grunt
another pill, pure
white, quarter-scored,
like the Eucharist,
like a sport
These are the cures that isolate
These are the cures that chill
These are the cures that splice the will
These are the cures that kill
Black Cockatoos
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
Banksian 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.
Horus and Set
for Zachary Humphrey
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.
another journey by train
at the [??]'s [love] awaits my Buddha each
OSIRIS-moulded foot depresses bitumen: Art
Department's 'ICU' wanting to watch me
watching you' a minimal din from SENNHEISER skylines
often smogged
offer
Xi-He's only star,
overblown cerulean
on an almost-identical hue festooned
commandments: When tone sounds, press the ill-
'IIIII C U, following
your every move ...'
uminated button to open doors. When a second warning
Please keep doorways clear Do not lean against, hold or
force open Donotjumponoroffamoving seat
s must be vacated for use by passengers with
special needs.
Penalties apply
[down arrow] Yarra platform: a black bicycle, a black roller
- blade, a black skateboard, a black bottle
swing strangely from DICKENSIAN bricks (hot red circles, hot red
slashes overlap i.e. [empty set] [up arrow] bound: strictly prohibited. Heavy
metlink
Welcome
aboard No feet on seats No [begin strikethrough][end strikethrough]
language or behavior
No smoking No alcohol consumption No graffiti
nbsp; FOR YOUR SAFETY
During your journey
your behaviour may
be monitored on CCTV
'I feel U watching me now
III C U ... wanting me now'
Dissociation
The waiting
lane: a ten-pin's
set, then rocks and
strikes the waxen pine,
snatches
at a metal frame:
a tiger-lily-orange
five-pin
obfuscates
raised lesions:
three candlepins,
cheeks milked of fat,
roll psychic eyes
to lifeless walls
forget forget forget
black bowling balls
and silver scythes
the doctor's
stiff like Wet on
Wellington's
artificial
marble gods:
and I, this scene
too close to the bone,
a classical bystander also.
ENDONE® Oxycodone
hydrochloride 5 mg
Blister-white tablet engraved with 'ENDONE'
on one side, break bar the other.
It does not take the place of your doctor
or pharmacist: opium or morphine:
Accident or Emergency.
Store it below ground, above ground, in
an unlocked cupboard. Store it in the bathroom,
store it near the sink. Leave it on every
window sill, leave it in the car. Swallow
it before meals with a glass of nausea.
Do not show your pupils, abnormal,
do not show your restlessness, do not show your
goose
-flesh, do not show your fast heart rate, do not show your
new
-born child to a doctor or pharmacist.
Reflections
even sunstruck the ribs rise
from Bennelong Point like Arthur C
Clarke's black slab
I storm the frets, stopping
only to whirl when your aperture's
cocked at my spine
this hair's a sand tornado
'ridiculous,' you needle,
'a blond gothic' no
licks of laughter (Father,
Son, Ghost shedding Prozac), my
Scorpio sting: 'fuck off, Madame Acronym'
* * *
the ticket snakes
on knotted
wood shoved between twin beds
once
we had no need
for such arpeggiated space
dulled, you insult
my headphones: 'Other
Voices', 'A Reflection', 'Grinding Halt'
Fender-grey,
a seagull pummels crossbows
on the pane
* * *
three four five
raven finished
casts embark Dry Ice
I'm more cleft
than that acoustic-electric
presented by my daddy
in stunting aisles minors gravedigger-
dance and mew
'lovecatsss'
a crèche of stars
weeps plasma at the mutilated
placard of the Harbour
Deep Sea Love
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!' OM,
MH and two others have their birthday
today on the sixth.
Her photophore
shimmers shimmers shimmers. I bite, dissolving skins.
Parasite, I atrophy to gonads: deep sea
love for my common black devil, my humpback.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Glasshouses by Stuart Barnes. Copyright © 2016 Stuart Barnes. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Reflections,Fingal Valley,
The Moon and the Mason Jars,
Ebon Cans,
13,
n3 Poccnn,
ValproateFluoxetineClonazepam,
Black Cockatoos,
Horus and Set,
another journey by train,
Dissociation,
ENDONE Oxycodone hydrochloride 5 mg,
Reflections,
Deep Sea Love,
Proverbs,
I,
Glasshouses,
Port Curtis Road's End,
The Rabbit Catcher,
10.15 Saturday Night,
sad,
The smile's,
eggshells,
colour wheel,
spark,
i won't let the sun go down on me,
Five Centos,
Cinquecento,
Walking Wounded,
Forcento,
Moon-,
Matrimonies,
Cyclone Songs,
Prelude,
You do what you can, or Eleven Steps,
Doubleness, with anagrams,
Blessed be,
Bees,
Bursaria spinosa,
First Mail,
Cyclone Songs,
Blackout,
The ice storm's,
Coda,
In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country,
Drums,
Cattle,
Stern Man,
Mr Gingerlocks,
Cups,
The Mixtape,
In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country,
Snowdrop in the Tropics,
Double Acrostic,
Notes,
Acknowledgements,