joanne burns

hunch

how many sandy creeks can
a language bear they were so hard
to identify through a wind pipe,
the cream for the devonshire tea defiant
as a brick you couldn’t see the two tree
hill behind the red jumbo; so what is the point
of disappointment this was a world of sheds: sales
and erections - and wet dreams aquariums; people
were falling above our four bedroom car - the valley
spread below in laconic grandeur: quibbles
vanished into the view the air wore your hunched
feet into waffles; return that insurance guide

wharf song

the floor stretches    amplifies    as the poets
read to the microphone proud for a moment
like the prototype of a linoleum polish
and or the beginning of a pindaric ode
- could a continent locate a small
ripple in its mind depressed deep
beneath a rock economy; fresh impatience
chucks a prickly bouquet from the mirrors
of its dance studio and poetry slinks
back into the darkness of pockets, as a
saw pokes its teeth through the partition
the generic wine flooding the loss of words
like a late transfusion