Jill Jones


End To Begin

Barefeet the sad one       Deaf secret

Facts ordinary-sung       Gestured silver bells

Isolated by history       Localised by story

Programs of rest       Remainders gutter our monumentals

Song naved retreat       Tattooed the past era

When whosoever with will



In Such A Night

after days of putting down
because I could not

come sleep
diligent elected farewell

gone now the huffy
I bring fresh junk

kitchenette lyke as much madness
no, no, go obscurely yet

piping down
queen-ann’s-lace

ragged skirting turning
unquiet vowels

we drive between
your absence


Escape, Now, It’s

OK, someone said, the nightclub will soon have
boneshakers, bonfires
but watch for that moonbeam over the dogcart.

The timekeepers nuzzle dark airbuses
they’ve come to bury secrets in hollows.

Go, get you cosseted, rainbow.
Watch the skydiver’s rump as you stumble with him,
don’t let the lemur sparkler out of sight.

There’s a humming from the marsh,
someone’s crying to be got in darkest tendrils
and I’ve dipped into the red nest and way unto
wallaby floorboards.

Let no-one defeat you into brimstone
lighten your handbills and hand them, defaulter,
into the trilby’s brim, it’s so featherweight.

There are poisons for the wallet, my old floozy,
and a skylark rumples amongst the tenements
while looters gatecrash the rainforest.

Here’s another feature on neglected poisons,
a collaboration with raincoats
any masochist could cry with.

Begone and suckle your bookends, bury
the hedgehog broadside, then defect, darling,
with a tenner in your nightgown.


Gems in the Weird

I’m hung by Time but don’t worry
your shaggy beads. Call me troublesome
about summer gear, so get thee towels.
The ‘fuck you’ song is pretending
to moon, pretending to leave.
Don’t cuss, be calm, be queer,
kiss without caution.
Why do they make contestants drink
poison on pinpoints, to darn socks
or muck in the sap & wish
horticulture to breath easy in moonbeam.
Turn it off, you extras, they won’t pay you
they won’t pay the dogs, it’s skrimping
out of sight in a mind of humidity.
This is not a city nor are there clowns.
Sometimes makes you somber, or self-absorbed
in your knickers & playthings.
I am not what I am but not that either.
Act as if you can hear trees talking, microbes
discoursing with the modern ground.
Even if you wimp it, there’s a glass
of rain coming your way.
Rub matches over our papers,
lies are fires, let limbs do their work.


Never Close

I have to tell night, you fangled fortune teller
of the blue death, the crackpots
where nerves intrude or is it merely routine
repellent, I had suspicions, a main chance
that went downstream, in circles
I’d do anything to speak, alone
I really must work, and not see morning
these are terrible questions, is it true
am I thrown by events, of a peripatetic ilk
I was never that close to a distinctive style
but that detective recognized my hand
Otherwise, I’d be dedicated to reaching the end
despite my sickness imagined, my pleasure’s
a saucy cloud but how do you turn it off



Jill Jones has published six full-length books, the latest being Dark Bright Doors (Wakefield, 2010). She co-edited, with Michael Farrell, Out Of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann, 2009). She has also published five chapbooks, the most recent being Passages: Annotations (Ungovernable Press, 2010), a pdf-ed e-book of poems and poetics.
 
 
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