Landscapes - Stuart Barnes

LANDSCAPES

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
Marcel Proust

(I) Collingwood

the Magi are imaginable

a poultice for sizzling footpaths

jasmine’s in clusters like jellyfish

or brains over ramshackle wooden

fences – missing pales, missing teeth

sepia light smogs broken warehouse

rooftops, cracks the jade-green eyes

of stray white cats you stalk,

face ringing like a church bell

(II) Clifton Hill

alarming palaver! blue Mary,

grey child OshKosh B’Gosh

buggies, brown and black – they pass,

slow as hearses birds-of-paradise

fly fabulous crests’ molten colours

at the air; I stare and stare the light

of the day is starry, and comes

from the eye of the cardinal mountains

you come out of nowhere

(III) Abbotsford

a shock-haired man rubs lamps

of Technicolor glass graceful

as giraffes, nuns unfurl dark habits

hands rub like papery leaves

in November there’s mayhem

at the manger last winter I witnessed

a froth of hops, like sheep or a crime,

across the water you in white

across the water fire in the sky

Stuart Barnes
http://pool.org.au/users/stuart_barnes

In The Middle Of The Night - Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

In The Middle Of The Night


She played video games

on a dirty brown couch



that reeked of Doritos

and sweaty ass.



She pulled the heads

off her Barbie dolls



in a dark apartment

above Charley’s Bar



where her mother

turned tricks for crack.



She joined the Army

to pay for college–



put on boots

and slammed

to Combat Rock.



Now she sits on a

leather sectional,



sells adult toys

in Manhattan,



has 798 friends

on Facebook,



updates her page

with sexy videos



and hangs up

when her mother



calls bawling

in the middle

of the night.

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder
http://juliebuff.wordpress.com/