Pam Brown


Closed on Mondays

too nice
   &         when you leave
   
   everything is white noise,
          no traffic, 
    no music,    no muffle, 
       just thick air
                        whirring
    
greyness leaks
           into the afternoon,
  a dirty kind of day

kids are rolling 
      down a mound 
            of irradiated tilth

the world's 
        assembled curatariat
is queueing unhappily 
              for their passes 
        in light drizzle

perdido's 
      on eastside
& I'm trying ballerina moves
            on the fibre mat,
   preceding biceps curls
with pitiful 
            one kilogram weights

a tiny plastic 'T'
       snipped from
                   a price tag,  
  caught in the mat


is there any 
             news from Mars
   that's better 
                       than here?

                                *

latest is
       R.Mutt's a meme

it was when you said
 " say
      'thanks Marcel' "

                                *  

death's announced  
        to
         a quick declivity
                  (joke)
of upload, list & link —
scrolling,
            the final ritual 

mourners weeping,
               for themselves,
no ghost
  in the crematorium machine

                                *

like Georges Perec wrote —
        Nothing is happening, in fact
                     
 
every single thing's
             a tourist destination
& 
     everything's
             available to everyone 

taking phone photos
       of the brickworks stacks
from the back seat 
               on saturday night

gawking at the mud
      caked on cars 
 drifting 
          on the flood plain

                                *

time experienced  
   as a perpetual rush
                to 
           the latest in new

o no
            it's Monday
it's closed

 & you reveal
         a dour scepticism
                    of pop culture
          but
  I'd give it
               another chance

following
          my dorky polestar,
relentlessly discursive  

                                *

                open the cider

       'thanks Marcel'

                                *

so you want 
           to write in a cave
      &
take your source material
                     with you?

                                *

searching all over
        for the house
            where it's quiet
         because 
 Wallace Stevens
                       says it is

                                *

a vase
       of droopy roses

fine dust 
             covering
                       a tower
         of expended 
                 nivea cream jars

                                *

& 
    when I arrive 
          there's a manuscript,
   poems,       new to me, 
open for reading

      the first pages
                   have
              draft numbers —
Draft #1  Draft #2
                         — at the top

before anything else
          the rims around
  my eyes 
              feel tired

the empty room
          purrs its scope
              
I imagine
    a well-polished 
                    furniture voice
trying nonchalance,
       the sheets of typing 
                             called
            "my stuff "
  
                                *

        it's coming along

                                *

stretch out now,
     a woven plastic lounge

muscle & bone grind
      shoulder bone
                grind

warm your dead feet
        beneath the baobab tree

                                *

thin transparent oil 
                         slowly leaks
     from the barrel 
                 of the souvenir pen,
  the plastic historical figure
             no longer slides 
         along the mini city backdrop,
                              he's stuck
   at the bottom of the scene

                                *

mid april
   &
               the xmas wreath
is still pinned
       to the front door
              of the neighbour
 who died 
              on boxing day

Pam Brown has published many books, most recently a booklet of six poems, More than a feuilleton (Little Esther Books, 2012), and Home by Dark (Shearsman, 2013) She edited Fifty-one contemporary poets from Australia for Jacket2 where she is an associate editor. She lives in Sydney.
 
 
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