Jill Jones

Difficult Poem

     (yeah, like a


lucid tiff   fit of plum   dolt cuff

epic mould   cute plod   dulcet mop

coiffed lump   polemic fit   demotic puff

muffled tic   code flip   deficit flop

melodic if   cleft podium   iced muff

tumid elf    difficult mope   lucid top



One City Is (space mix)

One city is another city                I clothe     streets
                                                        pluck     luxury
    One city is green and blue          each word     a stitch
                                                    one city    and yellow
arpeggios seams heels dreams       it all goes    around (and around)
                                                       the cadence     adjusts
    each city late at night

                                                   I dress like the moon
                                                                that meddle
I dress like the sun                  arrogant      teasing
                                                  I fumble with chambers
    I play all the organs                      I failed      the room
                                                      I repeal     blush
There are roads throughout                 needless  
                                                    figments (figments figments)

    I was born in the afternoon            chafe at fashion   fuss
            fragments                            in my homely head



One City Is Another (dream radio remix)

I was born in the afternoon
I wake up in fragments
in my homely forehead

I still chafe at fashion

I dress like the sun
arrogantly and teasingly
even in embrace

I fumble with chambers

I dress like the moon
around that satin breeze
Dreams are a meddle

Inside me a cadence seams

One city is green and blue
each word is a stitch
One city is another city

I am clothed in all of them



One City Is (alt space mix)

pluck each word 
along my indolent sinew

this gown this shirt this glove
       it all may turn around

cadence drapes, it adjusts
around that satin in the breeze
      in dreams 
that meddle

even the embraces
I failed at in the room
paint them cover them

blushes
their needless opera

everything’s a terrible plan
recordless trance

I wake up in fragments
one city     another



The Light of the Plants that are Growing (a cento)

I am a reed. My river waits reply.
An old shell singing.
I never yield but wait.

Across the red sky two birds flying.
Little voices of the air. A ribbon at a time.
Ways one could be learning to use in being gay.

I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.
The blood is listening in my frame.
The skirt. And water.

You mean ocean water.
Not exactly an ocean a sea. A success.
The tawny sweetwinged thing.

Yes we see it every night near the hills.
This is so natural. Birds do it.
We do not know their name.

I held her hand the tighter.
Shadows hold their breath.
With what. With what I said.

[Phrases/lines from Emily Dickinson, Nos. 14, 72, 162, 320; Katherine Mansfield, ‘Now I am a Plant, a Weed’, ‘Across the Red Sky’, ‘Voices of the Air’; H.D., ‘She Contrasts With Herself Hippolyta’; Gertrude Stein, ‘Lifting Belly’, as well as poem-versions of Sappho by Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘To Constantia, Singing’; Alfred Tennyson, ‘Fatima’; Algernon Swinburne, ‘Songs of the Springtides’; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Song of the Rose’, words from this last forming the poem’s title.]

Jill Jones has published eleven books of poetry, and a number of chapbooks. Recent books include Viva the Real (UQP), Brink (Five Islands), and Breaking the Days (Whitmore Press). She lives in Adelaide where she is co-publisher, with Alison Flett, of Little Windows Press.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page