Pam Brown


Dry Ice

this is the place to come,
      to work in winter in summer,
 it’s in a photo of shadows -

staring out at the rain 
       that's always falling
    from the poetry magazine skies
         
the people in this archive
                  know how to be quiet,
    plugging in
               to the table sockets,
lining up to hot spots

     (but 
   why are the reference shelves
             empty
                   from 495 - 580, 
       from south asia to botany?)

 it's way above
               the traffic,        no birds,  
         a fake pot plant, specks of diesel
                                  on the upwind,
     too noisy to sit outside,
        too high up to stand and lean 
 (resist a chronic urge 
                   to throw yourself over the railing, 
          splat onto the white double lines -
    a broken up bloodied blob, 
                                                finished)
maybe safer 
      to use the hi-speed internet 
                               at Woolworths,
   no balcony there

*

in the evening,
             under a windstorm,
watching Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Sabotage’
    needles and pills in the cooler,
                     (none for pleasure), 
contemplating decomposing
                     (an elegy for complications)
             in a lull in the drama

*

Georges Bataille said 
     By writing I wanted to get to the bottom of things. 
     And, having given myself this task, I fell asleep. 

*

‘no content, only dirt’
                Linh Dinh podcasts.
I am at your front door, Linh,
       it’s early,
 garbage trucks make their hyperaubade,
                               I'd like to contribute
but I wouldn't know 
           bad junk from good junk

same problems in poems, poetry magazines,
     news sites, plays, sciences, films -
                      and I’m fuming like dry ice,

can poetry do it though,
         specifically, address problems
                                       from the sofa,
 when the world erupts
                      in high definition,
      dictatorships crack and collapse,
  corporate investment tumbles,
                                 can't  poetry follow ?

*

eyes narrow, lids lost their spring -
            there's no spring in your lid these days,
  just like Bataille, falling asleep. 

down below
     globs of gobspit dot the bitumen,
mesmerised, up here,
           by the pulsing glow of standby 
   lighting a narcotic path
                           to the Foxtel card slot

Since 1971, Pam Brown has published many books, chapbooks, and an e-book. Her most recent title, Authentic Local, was published by papertiger media in 2010. She has a long editorial association with Jacket magazine and blogs intermittently at thedeletions.blogspot.com. She lives in Alexandria in Sydney.
 
 
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