Jill Jones


The Self Re-run

I go out with my daily fragilities
into gussied-up streets, through the dumpster hours

I make a myth of myself, a prophet of loss
to foretell my becoming, or my lingering return

I think now in bullet points instead of the wickedest fables
I return most things I order

The pills make me clear while sorting
through all my disjecta membra

‘Every commodity has a potential Somewhere’
Ice melts too quickly in my glass

I avoid mirrors because I know what I’ll see
But shallow water can also be deep



Daß Ich So Traurig Bin 

What do you say to the dead?
We live faster now than a single planet

My soul pours into a bucket
My bones chatter to the future

What have they done to my song, ma?
Am I a metaphor, a lie, a replicant?

I’m all out of time, as past, re-run, re-boot
Is this my ghost shape, or my primitive motion

I arrive on a dark and stormy afternoon
Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten

Everyone’s dead, we’re all still walking
A clothesline sways in the shadowlands



In the Zone

Perhaps I should write a novel to cover my debts
Every word knows how to turn

‘Ça plane pour moi’ is my pose for today
Every song is about running with moments

Perhaps I should learn to think with a tiny hammer
Whatever is broken is also made

Every breath I take is something particular
Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker

The paroxysm of vertigo is a kind of stammer
It comes between me and the ground, a grand hesitation

There’s an eerie rush into the inaccessible, then I come back
into myself, and the world looks trustworthy again



Angels Need Swords

You may not possess your body.
A plastic bucket barely contains what emerges.

There’s a line of men outside in resentful uniforms.
Another woman will clean things up.

The kids on the lawn hit each other with gusto.
We make sure the brother wins when he loses.

Fruit is rotting as it always has, wrinkled and yellow.
A ragged mannequin mocks life squared in a mirror.

You can still become your beast and howl through glass.
The moon loves you because then you’ll dance.

The window loves you when you do not shiver.
From it you can fly.

                                                               - after works by Paula Rego

 

Part of Speech

Maybe I’m a part of speech if
my tongue interrupts things.

Pipes sing if you switch on the light
spouting forth more than conjugation.

What if all my machinery fails and no-one
nurses it through random presences

a train sound in the sometime midnight
temperature dipping below thought.

My dissent is more than
internal silent reading, or being a symbol.

Remember the days when a purpose seemed
the best way to swoop through time.

Jill Jones lives on unceded Kaurna land. Her latest book is Acrobat Music: New and Selected Poems. Other recent books include Wild Curious Air and A History Of What I’ll Become. Her work is widely published in periodicals in Australia, Canada, Ireland, NZ, Singapore, Sweden, UK, and USA. She currently writes and teaches freelance, and previously has worked as an academic, arts administrator, journalist, and book editor.

 
 

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