Jill Jones

from: It sings through air


Passing

this rain
shivers on us again

but again
that rare thing extemporises

grey lain
among the green or

orange lights
chase moving shadows there

between road and rotting rail
impasse

an action of the state
anxious

sheeting the lifting jet
fears

goes into
the seeded clouds grassing

we pass
as we go into



Ferneries

sixteen days without television - and so ...

screen has no angles no size

no mountains trees and no smell

to speak of apart from something ...

sixteen days without - instead - poems aloud

and air aloud with water ferneries



A history of love, in parts

Red leaves and a storm.

The early life without mirrors.

Broken lines in a coast.

Another night gone inland, into rain.

Not in my voice, but in gardens.

Is sky anywhere?

Sympathy and trees, meaningless, half-seen.

To have gone away.



Homeward bound

You forget everything is attached to wires.

Getting up sometimes does work.

Once you missed salving your left hand. That hurt for a while.

Rain drops inside.

Peace should never be left to them.

The morning parrots are night’s ghosts, rearranging.

To have gone away or reframed the problem.

There’s music on the road: pick it up! it sings.

Better to have let the cats look after the station.

Needing no locks. Then kiss me!

Patience is my secret vice.

Making green water.

Even the trains need to rest.

We should get drunk more often and hold hands.



Distances

Each day is impossible as I fight with contours.

My horizon breathes its narrow fog, as militaries hedgehop by day.

Dusty trees tremble in darkness.

Silver-plated clouds and tiny craters slip stones into my mouth.

Here I wait for breaks at sea, cracks in holes made by language.

I am a stone at the bottom where each word will be stolen.

I could head for the pale yellow distance or die in repetition.



Jill Jones latest books are Broken/Open (Salt, 2005), shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year in 2005 and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in 2006, and Fold Unfold (Vagabond, 2005).

She won the Kenneth Slessor Prize in 2003 for her fourth full-length book, Screens Jets Heaven, and has collaborated with photographer Annette Willis on a number of projects, the most recent being Breath, the hours in The Drunken Boat.

Other recent work has appeared in The First Hay(na)ku Anthology, Jacket and MiPOesias. She keeps a blog called Ruby Street.


 
 
 
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