Issue One - April 2007
Keri Glastonbury
Keri Glastonbury is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle. She completed a Doctorate in Creative Arts at University of Technology, Sydney, in 2005. Her thesis, titled ‘Shut up nobody wants to hear your poems!’, staged a friendly title bout between painter Adam Cullen and poet Ted Nielsen, two male grunge auteurs of her generation. She has published two books of poetry, Hygienic Lily (Five Islands Press, 1999) and super-regional (Vagabond, 2001) and has an unpublished manuscript 'Grit Salute' (2004). She is an editor of the small publishing company, Local Consumption Publications (www.localconsumption.com) who are this year releasing the title Strawberry Hills Forever by Vanessa Berry.
hygienic italy
‘but are you social nexus or cultural interstice? that’s the type of question the tour guides won’t answer’ Ted Nielsen, ‘Pax Romana’. ( effusive:
you’d like to be differently enculturated, though in the end there’s a charm in being in relation to yourself, irrespective like age, that won’t excuse anyone—& yet, tonight you fell in love with her impeccable rendition of rebellion so braced, like a sleek carriage with a hybrid accent acquired abroad. you, all the while, way too verbal is it really freeform? even the american was grounded, smoothly modulated, listening to your mental garbage cleansing—as the roman sky turned cobalt blue against the mustard church you’re surrounded by new exteriors & too many saints as suddenly all your tropes seem so maligned—being gentle with yourself to coax the high down what a lot of english you can sprout ( hygienic italy:
pigeons and satellite dishes occupy the event horizon
across vast condominium rooftops
perhaps fluttering anti-angels leave the basilica
for the smashed terracotta hill of testaccio
or form emergent, from the grunge and gravitas
but are they, even ala
laurie anderson, luce iragary, jorie graham
your ideal intermediatries?
at a point where art & money cleave together
or apart, a plaque on the wall tries to unite
in new ideas and faith in talent
heralding all our smug alterities (eg: poems)
a situated intelligence
which leaves you to gesticulate on the streets
the mastery of repeating language acquisition
something else you always yawned at, until now
a sonorous cipher, you wish—along with a fiat cinque cento
for hooting around
( bella figura:
the driver in pigtails and furs tries ardently to elicit more than physiognomy’s silent science the movement of the car naturalising the city streets to a point of cathexis that never arrives trouncing your fledgling accretion process your fringe mown in an attempt at suburban sharp & more like, a member of hush. you sense you’re surrounded by voracious readers & translators not afraid to overshoot the mark.. so, it’s preferable to internal monologues, or the self-deprecations of the ‘performative’ you’re used to or cowering in the face of the high femme once summer breaks out the mini-skirts followed by a joke about trains full of perfumed boys playing pocket billiards ( 3rd rate hotel:
a sandy rain, born devotional roughs a sirocco sky like stone wash while you’re breaking the settee of arts council fantasy you believe it when she says rome’s been spoilt post the 60s but let’s not get glib there’s always memory studies and expatriate experts even angels have right wings as if a counter-reformation on traffic infringements might start a spate of double-parking in perth her sister-in-law as howler monkey so it bothers us, like passive smoking the botticelli’s so blanchett & woo, i’m feeling so bohemian like you ( justified & ancient:
a slumped angel
headstone and gramsci’s grave
find you among the conifers
& a posthumous library
weighted by voluminous spines
& a short shelf-life
a shift to the affective level
getting your attention
like heavy handed art house
reading old books
has you surprised to learn
the dog ‘shat’ in the tucker box
though for the most part
you remain disengaged as a cabby
on imperial administrative interests
driving home the episteme
( carravagio:
a rapid summer downpour, street’s full of motorini horns and sirens, while you’re buffeted along plateau upon plateau—jargon relative as rabbiting on, whatever else concomitant with that one day molar, next molecular—illuminated manuscript or subcontracted signwriter, THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT in 500 point georgia bold—a question of flow god is a vector monster, remaining beneath, above & within the product—or just shot through your spiritual highs make you reach for the love addiction guide as you will the lines closer together, into a thrumming scaffolding no grumpy bastard could use to translate or reproduce later, rain sprinkling in through the roof’s natural shower rose wandering home from the family palazzo, the etonian accent of the prince roller-skating round the ballroom the squeamish pope in red ‘too real’—& st john the baptist in nomenclature only, a wry tuft of adolescent pubic hair soft, as upholstered walls in genovese velvets ( brava:
infused by gradients of atmosphere, as the city’s spring makes the laundromat cheery and deferred purchasing limns the shopfronts, a threshold away from murano glass and your exquisite ambivalence. the street’s pock marks the pique arousals. poor pride, as well as prada street vendors assuming you’re nordic, demure, pure & full of forgetting in the self-image quiz show things just playing out, remnants of the feminine, adjusting your antenna—to appreciate bras and leather goods in the windows wondrously—& no magazines have colonised the space you are in. you won’t enter the stores and cultural discretion will thrive on these glimpses the body there, but you’re not in the driver’s seat perhaps you thought it was the passenger side