Jill Jones


Invisible Cities

Things get tense over tickets
the emergency freak glass

A kid with a kite reads over
someone’s shoulder

Looking for a mountain on a postcard?
Picking a spooky theme on a phone?
There’s the mystery suitcase!

Directions lurch in their soundtracks
Rain soaks into tar
Do not behave like a bomb!

Behind a facade there’s the hidden
life of a washing line filled with birds
whose weather is naked

You can smell it
over the drip-fed bitumen

Climate rucks things together
at the end



Order of the Day

I’ve dreamed of carnivals, frocks,
a bathing woman, hoops, tomorrow.

A cyclist nearby shivers. Possible smog.

The order of the day seems tense.
The wrong sort of ending.

Despite banal minor drugs, a home
is something. Hearthrug. Plastic fairyland.

A concordance of crafty voice-overs.
Failing to focus. Or the wrong enemy. 

Though its effigies turn awkward, life’s holy
in some way, even as time and its quarry twists.

I, too, have gone there, aching to retreat or fly.



Fate or Accident

wounds are fate or accident    of the wind    sun
     or the gene that doesn’t love you
orders and cashless measures that don’t hide you

the gods are no use   they’ve moved onto the next fire
     they are as usual    derelict although beautiful    making you
a tree    a wolf    a hyacinth    an endless cloud crossing an ocean



Moving Zero

there’s nothing private in sound or sight
     all you need is an angle and something to steal

I’ll talk about nothing for millions
the perfect overdose you’ll never feel

     even tears tiktok    wind fells many things
whoever’s speaking digresses around point zero



Acute Directions / in six fragments

bark
showers from clouds
splendid, frantic
         flocks run across
         the carpark
         baying
and now
we’re on the
run

*

in the acute
direction
of commerce
         despite
         pressed markets
         and exhaustion
there’s some
kind of emergency
switch

*

something’s gouging
the earth and
pathways
         replacing verges with
         towers
         and capital
lights once were
flowers
not asterisks

*

in the fluorescent
glow
machines cry
         from ditches
         birds call from
         fences
the dead
part of the
storm

*

slant memory
ignites
a hunger ghosting
         in flame light
         giving
         that necessity
of pain
formed
where abundance is

*

where’s the good
news?
in work
         the act
         as it stands
         sharp
framing
the measure
a gleaming instrument



Si   len   ce

Wheat unsettles in the silo
Plastic flaps in grass by the roadside
Silt churns on the shore
   not silence

A silvery light changes the clouds
Water gurgles in the sink
A storm rattles frame and sill
   not silence

Cybercast, siren
cyclist, sideshow
cyclone
   no silence

Silk falls to bruising
There’s a mumble in the quiet
Passing silhouettes turn in a curtain
   not silence

A pattern of whisper and dare
Hum and hushing
By what’s said, not said
   is no silence

By there 
   By here
         By where
            no    si   len   ce

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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