Catherine Vidler



Unfinished poem


Could you shut the poem?
Would you mind shutting the poem?
It’d help to have the poem shut.
It’s getting a bit crowded in here.
Shall we keep out the words?

*

Now, what have you forgotten to do?



A tetrad for the restoration of a Pennsylvanian age coal swamp


(Shows, left)                                                          (Shows, right)


scale trees                                                             scouring rushes




(Shows, lower left)                                             (Notes)


seed ferns                                                               large dragonfly



20-dollar poem


Furless towers
               drizzle

potbellied typefaces.

Watchdogs, sightly
rewound,

innovate clockwise.

               Unrelated,

gobbledegook toboggans
boycott awfully,

pursue
longsome lowlands.

backslashes
               thickening.



Glass-blowing poem


No air                                                                            Bright, yellow,
                                                                                         smoky
                                                                                                                         Silent


Some air                               Bright blue                   Light blue
                                                                                                                         Silent


More air                                Bright blue                                                 Roaring sound



Still more air                        Bright blue                    Violet
                                                                                                                         Gentle hiss


Even more air                     Translucent-Violet
- less gas                                                                                                        Gentle hiss



Five-mooded poem


1.    The poem comes / is coming / came.
2.    The poem is said to be coming / it is said that the poem came.
3.    Is the poem coming / did it come?
4.    So the poem is coming after all!
5.    But the poem was going to come! (and now it turns out it is not)




Catherine Vidler's first collection of poems Furious Triangle was published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2011. She is the editor of online literary magazine Snorkel (www.snorkel.org.au)
 
 
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