Jal Nicholl


Four Sonnets

1.
of medium six. While under the wine a politics
of health which nearly raised to
to the seventh plaster we don't call 'em that'
s just too difficult, like my frieze

above? the labyrinth unkempt to by wayfarers
brine there being no more cat s
o we're able to meet you halfway                  (to the cat
alysing emphasis, you know, where poe-saurs sigh

from, don't..? The jagged plinth
foisonned, blooming in a cut-purse grey
run the mosquito out of samsara brand. ice.
is wealth to the samar-kind of hurry up you sexist my jar

of 50s ending in an f's for private semaphore
matches a couple a them 2 memoirs

2.
the staffroom opening on to a range of drinks, the
thriving self-fertiliser stinks the
place out $3 either way on the
osophy bushes for as long as is the

bus drives me to her house puked in the batches the
re was always the offer of moral support expiring at the
sight of milk in the
afternoon we were baking, baking the the

me was end of lent and you my best layer in the
ory pragmatists number one horse pony the
deposition depositing seed that soon morphed into the
seedlings we know from the camp at the

rmopylae last holidays I went to the
ravada camp wherein first I learned to use a lathe

3.
Write a poem about the colour red
get with child a bolt he's your friend; while
descending into one denotes
the season's clothed the school is naked

and in control at the pool of heaven
green is my favourite tree but alas there's only
red and some black ones left the primal scene
reveals a million levels       debt

is rather a bad dream it means Outdoors
used to do that other to dream
of death undertake self sufficient
experience their parent trees signifies prosperity and

happy union; but to eat them as prepared for commerce
they are omens of want and distress

4.
50 of my hurts will ride
on the same flash      an unsentimental kind of time
capsule containing erstwhile bits of
flaw, and cartoon sex before

it gets mobile. That was after the human
tissue came into play they sent a couple
ash bundles back to the owners bunch of
arseholes down on a chair at

the roller-skating rink, under attack
by inhibitions he dug
a hole in the mud: time goes fast when you're sleeping
the Paris Peace Conference almost over

now nausea             millions of cattle missing
chickens breaking out like bells



Jal Nicholl lives in Melbourne, Australia, and teaches in a highschool. He's published online and in print in various places, e.g. Mascara, Overland and Arena Magazines.

 
 
 
 
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