tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63138444696571195282024-03-14T08:02:52.789+11:00RAWSHOCKpoems and whatnot by australian poet toby fitchToby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-39458398783345507502013-04-07T15:19:00.001+10:002013-04-07T15:21:52.372+10:00<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: x-large;">Grace Leven Prize</span></span><br />
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Some exciting news: my book <i>Rawshock </i>has recently been awarded the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Leven_Prize_for_Poetry">Grace Leven Prize for Poetry</a>, one of Australia's oldest poetry prizes. The prize for 2012 was also awarded to 4 other books of poems, and apparently may not be given out again. For more info about the prize, click on the link. And, congratulations to the other poets, Michael Brennan, Laurie Duggan, John Kinsella, and Michael Sharkey! </span><br />
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-43589600417693702982013-03-28T23:07:00.001+11:002013-03-28T23:09:12.902+11:00<br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Dry, Mainly Sunny</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For those of us left behind </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">on Earth, autumn has devolved into </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">scrap-heaps; the ocean has mostly </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">transpired. No one remembers exactly </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">when dry ice began to fall on this </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">no man’s land where sleep is</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">barren, geography redundant, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">history blotted out, where</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">huge insects and deep-sea creatures </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">wage war in surround sound, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">bombarding each other with black </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">holes and white dwarves </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">while we mutate below — </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">our haven a heaving underworld </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">from which the lucrative few take off </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in their pleasure craft, their hyperbole,</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in search of greener planets. What we know </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">’s contrived — channelled, naturally, down </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">thru the digital feed, with the marketing </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">snuff, hoodwinking anyone </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">cranked up on dark matter, or hooked </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">on live bulletins — terrorism as </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">prime-time sport, talking</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">heads popping each other off —</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">schrapnel and tits the memorabilia for sale</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">on a website designed to look like</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">a crumbling art museum. One click links you</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to a pornsite of the gods where Zeus, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the Minotaur and Madonna coexist and love </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">lingers as a computer virus,</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">a glitch in the mainframe that you, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">babe, with your trigger finger </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">glued to the gaming console, drift off with </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">into cloud-fracking cuckoo land, free</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">radicals running amok, your dreams in </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">bits and pieces, in compromising positions, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">emulating the projections of our divine</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">plasmas that dance, ecstatic,</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">on the cave walls around us. Look! —</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our children’s children, stick-figure monsters, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">are throwing shapes and grinning like roadkill. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They flicker, they rally in vain, for who</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ever’s held at ransom in these pixelated </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">shade-haunted, red-carpeted jaws of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">hell-bending doublespeak. A wag’s tongue</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">somewhere is tickling the multi-coloured </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">drips of fat, the blips and bleeps, and </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the coffee-stained corpse in the fridge</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">is getting nostalgic for what that glitch</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in the system felt like, or for some other</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">feel-good story. Such divinations </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">are loony tunes to the beaming prophets</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">who’ve evolved into our puppets —</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">their gravitas is ancient string </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">theory, bankrolled by the gods</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">for spoon-feeding the not-knowing</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">what they’re saying when they say </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">we are resuming normal programming: </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">your forecast for today is dry, mainly </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">sunny, but tomorrow will bring a spell </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">of rain coming in from the east, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and the west, which will continue </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">at least until the weekend.</span></div>
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-13371135505150587342013-02-20T13:45:00.001+11:002013-02-20T13:46:27.313+11:00<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-size: x-large;">Diamond and the Thief</span><br />
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My deconstructed prose poem 'The Living Daylights' was published recently by Black Rider Press in their '<a href="http://www.blackriderpress.com/diamond.html">Diamond and the Thief</a>' online minizine. It's an almost impossible poem to code with HTML because it disperses down the page like a building losing its foundations, but somehow Jeremy Balius, chief thief, has done it. Click on the link to read.<br />
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<br />Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-89668760411117095252012-10-18T10:52:00.000+11:002012-10-18T10:53:33.642+11:00<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1" id="yui_3_7_2_14_1350517476848_133"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-large;">Review of <i>Rawshock</i> in <i>ABR</i> </span><span style="color: #cccccc;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Peter Kenneally</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, September 2012</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a result of the public works of Puncher & Wattmann, it has been established yet again that a book of poetry can and should combine meaning and design in a shock of pleasure. Toby Fitch’s first full-length collection, especially the central title poem, does this in spades. Orpheus returns to Hades to rescue Eurydice. In ten poems, each mirroring the original Rorschach ink blot on the page facing it, they spark and spar in a very modern way that has the dankness of Hades clinging to it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are pitfalls at almost every step in this kind of undertaking, and Fitch avoids all of them. He defibrillates the hackneyed theme, and creates sculptured poems that play with shape, stutteringly, and yet are living things, not merely rearrangements. Close the book, and watch as the poem folds into its ink blot, producing an almost physical sensation of collapse and coition.</span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Either side of this perfectly realised notion the book feels inevitably peripheral, especially as Fitch is so good at conjuring the monsters and strange atmospheres, as well as the quiet pleasures, of the inner-city edge. He lets every poem have the shape it needs, and, more to the point, knows when to let things be.</span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The book as a whole, especially in the latter part, refers to and appropriates the full pantheon of French poetry. Fitch works hard to create a kind of knowing, absinthe-coloured haze, but the tone and language of his glimpsed and off-kilter world often feels more Roger McGough than Apollinaire. In ‘Library Animals’, as two lexically enhanced lovers delve among the stacks, he is put on the spot — ‘“Put some more more English on it” / she whispers, with / my finger on her forepart’ — and he can’t help but oblige. </span></span></div>
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-23646292006843098752012-10-18T10:47:00.000+11:002012-10-18T11:00:25.116+11:00<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Review of <i>Rawshock</i> in</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>The Australian</i> newspaper</span><br />
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Geoff Page</i>, August 2012 </span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Toby Fitch's first full-length collection, <i>Rawshock</i>, has a ludic quality but a darker atmosphere. Many of the poems have dream-like geographies and meteorologies, owing a lot to the French surrealists.</span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As in the opening poem, On the Slink, they often have an inner-city resonance, not unlike an up-dated version of T. S. Eliot's Preludes ("Bottles in gutters, / alley cats on the slink / under streetlamps that crystallise / in the corners of my eyes . . .").</span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Following the surrealist influence of Guillaume Apollinaire and others, Fitch is plainly a poet who sees the shape of a poem on the page as at least equal in importance to its sound. Many poems in <i>Rawshock</i>, including the title sequence, are "concrete" poems, weaving their snake-like way down the pages or, as in The Living Daylights, diffusing into a scattered text to match the meaning of what's being said. While such devices are not new (George Herbert employed at least one of them in the 1600s), Fitch doesn't use them spuriously.</span></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="yiv270616111p1" style="font-size: 13px;">
<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The technique is taken to an interesting extreme, however, in the title sequence, which retells elements of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth -- while exactly matching the form of each poem to an en face Rorschach inkblot.</span></span></div>
<div class="yiv270616111p1" style="font-size: 13px;">
<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="yiv270616111p1" style="font-size: 13px;">
<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The strategy reminds us of the link between the subconscious and myth but it's not clear to this reader how much is gained beyond what would be apparent through more orthodox lineation.</span></span></div>
<div class="yiv270616111p1" style="font-size: 13px;">
<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="yiv270616111p1" style="font-size: 13px;">
<span class="yiv270616111s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite the enthusiasm of David Brooks and Robert Adamson on the back cover for Fitch's innovations, the best poems in this collection may well be the least shocking and adventurous ones, such as Fluff, which convincingly renders an inner-city dating scenario, and Mannequins, in which shop dummies mimic the mindlessness of those they're designed to appeal to. "If we stand anaesthetised by the / cleaning lady's spray gun, // dressed in the latest, we might blend in, / and late at night, when we're blind, // security guards will make love to us, / though only with their torches."</span></span></div>
<div class="yiv270616111p2" style="font-size: 13px;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="yiv270616111s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="yiv270616111s1"></span><br /></div>
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-12738696022698135992012-10-17T15:48:00.004+11:002012-10-18T11:46:32.783+11:00<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Gig Ryan's Launch of <i>Rawshock</i></span><br />
<i><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">@ The Alderman, Melbourne, May 2012</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Influenced by the French
poets, particularly Rimbaud, Apollinaire and Mallarmé, Fitch’s poems bathe in
the green light of imagination. Colourful, picturesque, partly visionary, his
poems take us on a journey in which the city is revivified through the lens of
poetry, in fact invented through poetry: shopping trolleys like giant
ice-skates, the "brittle night taken out of the fridge”, the “tooting owls, /
beyond the rooftops / into the twisting funnel of stars — / I could almost
crack open the night // and swig” (</span><span lang="EN-US">On the Slink</span><span lang="EN-US">), where “the
faculties lose their facility” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Floe</span><span lang="EN-US">)
(which echoes Rimbaud’s “immense derangement of the senses” that he proposed as
necessary for poetry: or, more simply, this </span><span lang="EN-US">is</span><span lang="EN-US"> what poetry does to us). The book opens
with a quote from Lewis Carroll’s
The Red Queen’s emphatic “Off with his head” — which also refers to Orpheus,
who ends as a head floating down a river singing his songs, after being
attacked by the Maenads. The first poem </span><span lang="EN-US">On the Slink</span><span lang="EN-US"> begins at night, the
following poems gradually moving into morning — “and then comes the morning
when it dawns on you / the sun is not going to rise any more than you will /
above yourself...where self-abandonment is out of vogue, tunnel / vision is the
new black” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Narrows</span><span lang="EN-US">). So Fitch refers to the poet
as a disembodied head, yet parodies any idea of disengagement: “Whatever you
say, say nothing — / as a bystander / amongst the panic and the vomit, / do
nothing and nothing will bend.” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Parallels</span><span lang="EN-US">). This book is split into three sections with the first and
third imprinted on each other, mirroring each other, as in the Rorschach test,
but not repeating — the first can maybe be seen as Orpheus in happier times,
his honeymoon period, when his poetic power can move the rocks and trees. The
middle section, or nightmare sequence,
is the Orpheus and Eurydice section with its explosion of raw shock / Rorschach
test, as if whatever is happening is open to multiple interpretations — each
burst of line and colour echoing the catastrophic events of the myth, the poems
literally breaking open, breaking down into single letters scattering around
the page, into almost wordless cries, as Orpheus’s powers of persuasion, that
is the power of poetry/of art,
leave him. The shapes of the poems echo the freedom and omnipotence of
Orpheus’ ability — unglued from the left margin, these poems shape themselves,
best shown in </span><span lang="EN-US">Oscillations
</span><span lang="EN-US">which literally
oscillates down the page, its lines and meanings bending accordingly.</span></span><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">His Orpheus and Eurydice
sequence utilises the original inkblot (Rorschach) test in technicolour,
dragging these mythological creatures up to date, bickering and pre-empting
each other, often humorously yet murderously. Where traditionally Eurydice is
silent, being rescued from Hades by loud-mouthed Orpheus, here Eurydice gets
equal billing “remind him I’m not
quite the damsel in distress” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Rawshock,
1.</span><span lang="EN-US">), “blue lyrics
hack us apart again and this time it’s terminal” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Rawshock,
3.</span><span lang="EN-US">) but rather
than feeling heartbroken at losing Orpheus, she says “finally I can hear myself
think”(</span><span lang="EN-US">Rawshock,
3.</span><span lang="EN-US">) so we see a
double-sided myth, and like all
poets Fitch gives voice to the once-voiceless ... while Orpheus responds: “Glue me to your wedding
gown ... Where’s our pre-nup I sing and bite, come / back to us, Bacchus, come
back!” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Rawshock,
2.</span><span lang="EN-US">). Using both
voices also resembles the inkblot, two sides of the same coin, of the same
smudged images that dance before our eyes turning into whatever we wish to
perceive. Orpheus is torn apart “possessed by nothing / but art, stripped by drunk women / of all I took for
granted./ Bones & borders / countries comfort / mean zip to me now...” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Rawshock, 10.</span><span lang="EN-US">). Fitch also sees poetry as
open to interpretation, as a series of images flattened onto a page — a murky
reed-filled mirror in which we see ourselves.</span></span><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">After the Orpheus and
Eurydice, we return to the poet’s bed in </span><span lang="EN-US">Apnoea</span><span lang="EN-US">, thus emphasising the idea that what we
have just been through is nightmare. Yet there’s also a sense that that section
has been an apocalypse, as he imagines a future in the poem </span><span lang="EN-US">Dry, Mainly Sunny — </span><span lang="EN-US">this poem also seems to take
from Baudelaire’s </span><span lang="EN-US">Le
Voyage</span><span lang="EN-US"> — “from which the lucrative few take off
/ in their pleasure craft, their hyperbole, //in search of greener planets...”
where “the coffee-stained corpse in the fridge / is getting nostalgic for what
that glitch / in the system felt like, or for some other // feel-good story...”
The book ends on </span><span lang="EN-US">Nightcap,</span><span lang="EN-US"> and much of this final
section seems to tip the world upside down. Here, in </span><span lang="EN-US">Finding H</span><span lang="EN-US">, a poem after Rimbaud, the poet is
jammed into the contemporary world:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I stood on a mountain with my
tablet<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> downloading
the seasons<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> and spun from new-fangled
spinnerets<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> a
pop song with themes and variations<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> to raunch the riverbeds,
undulate concrete<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> and shepherd the galaxy<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> into
a single omniscient cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And I streamed it to
everyone!...<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">His lover now “tormenting the
swivel chair ... pressing her own buttons.”
This section also reminds me of Baudelaire’s albatross, the poet is too
heavy for the earth, his outsized wings that impede his ability to walk on
earth ... that is, the poet’s natural habitat is in the air, flying. But Fitch’s
vision is more irrepressible than tragic I think, the poet remains unvanquished
by the trappings of the modern world — he adapts it: (</span><span lang="EN-US">Le Pont Neuf</span><span lang="EN-US">) — “Romantics, werewolves,
lunatics — / eat your hearts out! / So cries the city, pretty night-/ lights
twinkling ... Paris is howling! — even / the moon is puking its delight!”</span></span><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This book is also full of puns
and deliberate ostentatious consonance, deliberately breaking the rules of
poetic taste, scattering
wordplay around like marbles, eg
“cheek by jowl; no howl from the invalid mouth / stuffed with one insipid
mouse; the toes, / unable to tow the two...” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Floe)</span><span lang="EN-US">; or “Nyx and the Styx as stoned as onyx. You caN / collude with Chaos all you like” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Rawshock, 4.</span><span lang="EN-US">), or in his last poem </span><span lang="EN-US">Nightcap: </span><span lang="EN-US">“The only way to cap / off the
night / is to decapitate yourself...” again returning to Orpheus’s head as it
floats down the river to Lesbos ... and Orpheus’s death somehow looks back over
the book we’ve just read — “And I continue, wavering / till the dawn beyond the
final night, / traffic piled up in the rearview / mirror like a whitewash of
words, / none of which can tell me the right way” (</span><span lang="EN-US">Junction</span><span lang="EN-US">). But the book’s last lines speak of
reincarnation of the poet in a sense, and looking back — “ Now / feel the
fabric / of the clouds” — as his words wrap up the world and outlast him ... that
is, the poet has now entered nature and become it, the world we see forever
changed / heightened by his vision of it — but the poet’s world is made of
words, the traffic is like a whitewash of words because it’s only words that
poetry uses. The title and design
(the fabulous Chris Edwards) of this book are brilliantly appropriate as
each part mirrors, reflects, answers and imprints on each, with the vivid raw shock of the power of art (to move
the gods in Hades, to rescue the dead back into life) hallucinating brightly at
its centre.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i> Gig Ryan</i>,<i> </i>also published in Rabbit #5</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-22567711469262552202012-10-16T13:54:00.000+11:002012-10-17T15:28:36.638+11:00<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">David Brooks's Launch of <i>Rawshock</i></span><span style="background-color: black; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">@ Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, April 22, 2012</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(The first paragraph was read with tongue in cheek. -Toby)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I want to show you a picture, a detail from a painting from 1872 by Henri Fantin-Latour called ‘Le Coin de Table’. The detail, obviously, is of Arthur Rimbaud, sitting, though you can’t see it here, with Paul Verlaine, who would not long afterwards take a pot-shot at him. Now, I ask you, is that Toby or not? When Toby first came to see me about a possible Doctorate of Arts we went to the Courtyard Café for coffee and I asked him what he was proposing to write about. He said he wanted to write about Rimbaud. I looked at him and I thought to myself, what else could he have chosen?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now to read something: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Now you stride alone through the Paris crowds</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Busses in bellowing herds roll by</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Anguish clutches your throat</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> As if you would never again be loved</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In the old days you would have turned monk</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> With shame you catch yourself praying</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And jeer your laughter crackles like hellfire</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Its sparks gild the depths of your life</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Which like a painting in a dark museum</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> You approach sometimes to peer at closely</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Today in Paris the women are bloodstained</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It was as I would rather forget it was during beauty's</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> decline</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That’s not Toby, but Guillaume Apollinaire. I’ve already, on the back of this book, called Toby the Apollinaire of Avalon. Let me tell you a little about why. Amongst many other things, Apollinaire wrote a poem called ‘Zone’. A famous poem, about wandering the streets of Paris after the loss of his lover. And straight away, opening Toby’s book, there are images which remind me of Apollinaire’s opening lines (‘O Eiffel tower whose flock of bridges bleats at the morning’). But it’s not just that. This week you may have seen photographs, fresh from their publication in the LA <i>Times</i>,<i> </i>of US soldiers posing beside the dismembered corpses of Taliban suicide bombers. Hold the thought because I don’t want you to slip as lightly over my use of the word <i>dismemberment </i>as you might otherwise have done. Words can deaden with use, or be blunted and stripped of their power by the context in which they come to us. The context <i>here</i>, for example, is the launch of a collection of poetry. It’s in an art gallery. The words, at present, are coming from a poet/editor/novelist/ academic. All things – parts of a context – which can deaden. I’ve always been curious about the <i>dismembering</i> of Orpheus. That <i>other </i>part of the story. He loses Eurydice, goes down to Hades to find her, loses her again in the process of bringing her back. But <i>later </i>is torn apart – dis-membered – by a group of women followers of Dionysius. For a long time I’d heard or read that with a kind of mythic distance. Deadened by context. A myth. Ancient. Classic. Etcetera. But lately I’ve come to understand the myth of Orpheus differently. Forgive me if this has always been obvious to you; it’s only just become obvious to me. On one level it’s just a visual and tactile matter. I’ve stopped just <i>hearing</i> the myth and started to <i>see</i> it. There are fingers, parts of arms, sexual parts, parts of feet, there, on the ground, bleeding, in a clear space amongst the trees, and I hear the screams as it was done, clench my mind at the agony of it. Orpheus is always with us – surfaces (those <i>LA Times </i>photographs again) in complex and challenging ways.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’ve started to see Eurydice differently also. The underworld is everywhere. Under the car you might be standing next to. Under those sheets. Under that piece of wet newspaper in the gutter there. Under that woman’s or that man’s foot. Under that tree. Under those leaves. And Eurydice, too, is everywhere. In that dream you had last night. Under this or that piece of consciousness. In that thing you have only just remembered about your father’s silence. Under the words of that poem. Under the things that, in a painting, grab and hold your attention. The Other of our systems of thought and categorisation. The<i>trace</i> behind and about the individual word. The shadow behind that actor’s shoulder – you put in the name (Gregory Peck? Ava Gardner?) – in this or that movie. Just as the dismemberment of Orpheus, whatever else it means, also means that Orpheus, the god, the divine spirit of poetry – but no, I mean the bloody, dismembered parts of him, and the raw immediacy of them – is <i>spread through the world</i>, so Eurydice, the woman he had tried to bring back from the underworld, is also everywhere.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There’s something about the task of poetry here perhaps, or one of them, the<i>re</i>-membering of Orpheus, the perceiving and the gathering of parts and the assembling them into simulacra, copies without originals, of the dark wholenesses that we find otherwise impossible, especially in our postmodern era. And the place where, according to the myth, Orpheus was torn apart was called <i>Zone</i>, in Thrace. That’s the point. And Apollinaire’s poem ‘Zone’, about the place where Orpheus’ bloody parts are scattered, the place still ringing with his agonised cries, is Paris, is the modern city, is Sydney. And I call Toby the Apollinaire of Avalon, a little facetiously, perhaps, because rarely have I found a poet in my immediate vicinity who seems quite so much, in the images he assembles – draws from this city – like a gatherer of small pieces of sometimes bloodied, Orphic, singing dark.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s appropriate, absolutely harmonic and to the point, that <i>Rawshock</i> is centered about a sequence based upon the Rorschach ink-blot tests which made their percipients draw upon – try to draw up – the Eurydice in themselves. In this beautiful edition, in which you can see Toby’s ink-blot-shaped poems beside the Rorschach blots themselves, you can see how Toby pixilates those blots with words – turns them <i>into</i> words, or, rather, images, in a way that makes them at once as metapoetic as they are deeply poetic. I could use almost any of Toby’s poems to demonstrate the points I have been making, but look at these lines, from the first of the <i>Rawshock</i> sequence, Eurydice speaking to Orpheus:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">O E</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Orph e’s not</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> an ortho dox liar,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">replete with his newly high-strung lyre</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in the shape of a moth, or pelvis. His pincers thrum my box</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">as we coalesce with our big bad wolf masks on, yowling at the sky,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">watching each other morph in the storm</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> clouds, in the stains on our bed sheets: a pair </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">of bats twirling through the smoke of a fallen city. Pity: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">despirit</span><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> despite my spooky resemblance to purity, </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E perfect</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I prefer the white lies, the chase, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the dis placement of his face </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> when E remind him I'm not</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">quite the damsel </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in distress, O</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> no.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">\/ </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The liar, and the <i>lyre</i> – the pun there, yes, and the need to <i>see</i> the poem as well as hear it, but I’m not talking about that. The lyre, the moth, the pelvis. The pincers thrumming her pelvis as if it <i>were</i> a lyre, or guitar, <i>making </i>it that. The wolves – note how the mere masks call up, <i>make </i>the wolves happen. And the storm clouds, the stains in the bed sheets, the bats in the sky over the smoky city. Images; words <i>making</i> images. They are parts of sentences, parts of arguments, parts of a discourse, certainly, and I could be talking about that – Toby’s <i>meanings</i>, Toby’s <i>themes</i> – but (and without any denigration), the poetry is not in the message. What <i>is</i> that discourse, what <i>are</i> those sentences, those arguments, but the excuse for the Orphic gathering that the poems do? So many embers of <i>duende</i>, so many fragments of <i>cante jondo</i>. I’ve also called Toby a Lorca of the Inner West. It’s Lorca who talks most famously of the <i>duende </i> and the <i>cante jondo</i>, the ‘deep song’ of Andalusia – Andalusia which was also, ironically, one of the breeding grounds (that movie, <i>An Andalusian Dog</i>) of surrealism.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I could develop that a little. I could also talk about the sources or resonances of Toby’s spatial arrangements – his refreshing use of the page – in Apollinaire’s <i>Calligrammes </i>and, behind them, in Mallarmé’s <i>Un Coup de Dés</i>. And behind that, of course, I could talk about Rimbaud, and then try to pull all these things together. But this is probably enough. I don’t <i>have</i> to hold these things together. Toby’s <i>poems</i> hold them together. I invite you now to purchase them, if you haven’t already done so, and to take them with you – to a suitable bar or café, first, to talk until dark – it is April 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2012, after all, probably the anniversary of some important<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6313844469657119528" name="_GoBack" rel="nofollow" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"></a> thing or another (the Battle of Catania, perhaps, or the birthday of Vladimir Ilich Lenin) – and then to stroll out with them – the poems, that is – into the Sydney night. The conversation you have with them, I assure you, will be memorable.</span><br />
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<i><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Brooks</span></i><br />
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-57776112293421759072012-10-06T12:25:00.003+10:002012-10-06T12:34:30.506+10:00<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">nightcap</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Due to the tricky formatting of my visual/pattern poems, it's often hard to find publishers willing to create the time and space to publish them, but sometimes I strike gold.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Jeremy Balius of Black Rider Press has taken on my "wings" poem, called '<a href="http://jeremybalius.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/kickin-it-with-toby-fitch/">nightcap</a>'. Click on the title to read the poem and for some thoughts on how I wrote it.</span><br />
<br />Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-87822678364777505462012-10-06T12:15:00.003+10:002012-10-06T12:32:24.598+10:00<span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Best Of Australian Poems...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My poem 'La F<span style="line-height: 23.383333206176758px;">é</span>e Verte' has been chosen for Black Inc.'s <i>Best Of Australian Poems 2012</i>, edited by John Tranter. </span><br />
<br />Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-62822946498678985822012-04-24T18:46:00.010+10:002012-10-06T13:17:03.018+10:00<div class="p1">
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</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">La Fée Verte</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>(after a line by Apollinaire)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My glass has shattered like a burst of laughter,</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>pale green light sprinkling rain.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Seasick flowers bloom through the floor</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>while across the room</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">lips of a steamy creature fall </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>agape, her eyes grinning in my direction, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>blonde hair awash.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>O fey licorice, paregoric </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">of my second childhood, ease the pain — </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>take me to the cloudburst </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>and the gushing of her name.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>I can see my reflection </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in the blurred Van Gogh to the left </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>but that’s not the liquidation I seek. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not even the sugar and ice I spill down</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>her cleavage can make up for it. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>Take me away! What has been seen </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>cannot be unseen (the cameras will</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">babble and froth come morn, </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>hail or shine), so when I’m asked to leave</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>I stand up and pass out </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>into the street — heavy-headed tulips</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">brushing against my shins.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>The Australian</i>, 2012)</span></div>
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-82716207688970750182012-03-18T22:39:00.003+11:002012-03-18T22:52:12.157+11:00<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;font-size:180%;color:#ffffff;"><i>Rawshock</i> Book Launch</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;font-size:180%;color:#ffffff;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#cccccc;">On Sunday April 22nd, 2012, I'll be giving a reading at the Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills, Sydney, and having my book <i>Rawshock</i> launched! From 2pm...</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#cccccc;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#cccccc;">Not all details are finalised, but the book is about to go to the printers. In the meantime, if you can find yourself a copy of the March edition of <i>Australian Book Review</i>, you can read my poem 'Oscillations', which has been shortlisted for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize 2012 (I'd publish it on this here blog if I could, but it's particularly tricky to format, what being a massive 2-3 page cyclone). </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';font-size:100%;color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';font-size:100%;color:#999999;"><br /></span></div>Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-89645466227966939802012-03-18T22:35:00.001+11:002012-10-06T13:16:35.455+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Everyday Static</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Driving along alone</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">between unforgiving buildings,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">raindrops flicked up by tyres,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">airwaves breaking</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">like rain on a windscreen,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">reminded me of you and me</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in the car, in static:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">windscreen wipers tired;</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the tyres flat;</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the fire and its mountain-flames</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">hovering in our minds</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">like a back-seat driver gone to sleep;</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the world at water level as we pulled up</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">and gazed out into the harbour,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">mountains and rain dissolving in lumpy waves.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>Everyday Static</i>, Vagabond, 2010)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-40501122381311690412012-03-18T22:24:00.002+11:002012-10-06T13:16:12.038+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sonar</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">From a drunken cruise on the harbour</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">comes a bouncing melody: <i>I wanna </i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><i>have sex on the beach</i>. You can</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">see it on everyone’s (anyone’s) </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">mind as the summertime trees nod assent </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in the Botanic Gardens, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">their scent wafting up to the nostrils </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of skyscrapers breathing in fumes, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">pumping out bucks,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">relaying UV to the ant-sized joggers </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">who bound up and down along the shoreline </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">on sand grains jostling for legroom. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Above them, birds, checking out the goods </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of a small grey woman staring at the bridge, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">thinking: <i>I wanna walk across water </i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><i>like sound</i>, as her skin remembers </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px;">a distant </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 100%; letter-spacing: 0px;">prickling, another season,</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a sun and a wind that lifts her hairs.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>Overland</i>, 2012)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-1363371322578134272012-01-30T18:55:00.004+11:002012-10-06T13:17:38.439+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Junction</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> (after Reverdy)</span></i></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> </span></b></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">To pull up </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>at the lights,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>yield my shadow </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>to the sun, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>lean back on the wave</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and take the lip </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>for a pillow... </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Or to pull up and hesitate, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>amber lights </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>filling my eyes </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>till my head’s a </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>haunted house,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>till the wheel like water </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>escapes through my fingers...</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And I continue, wavering</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>till the dawn beyond the final night, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>traffic piled up in the rearview</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>mirror like a whitewash of words, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>none of which can tell me the right way.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>Everyday Static</i>, 2010)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-60325760901068491402011-11-02T23:17:00.004+11:002012-10-06T13:19:22.620+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Emotion Sickness</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All wobbly all over —</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>it’s not so much vertigo</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>as an aversion to inversion. Carry on</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>kidding yourself it’s giddiness, </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the bluff of your blood-</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> flow; </span>some old neophobia. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The carrion you</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>forget to keep in mind, i.e. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the equation to your qualm, may be </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>in remembering the moment </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>of your memory, </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>however fractured that keepsake</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">has become — the closer</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>to broken the better though, </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and confronting it by</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>donning a monocle helps </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>to make the ground </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>seem farther afield.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No need to be stable to drink</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>at this oblique </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>table. In oblivion </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>it’s easier being queasy any-</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> way, </span>and damn near </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>impossible to assure </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>that certain bleak hauntings won't</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>see you stepping ashore, upside-</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>down the morning after, </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>a black-and-blue sea </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>hung over </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the world.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">(published in <i><a href="http://snorkel.org.au/014/contents.html">Snorkel</a></i>, 2011)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-26990891321008282272011-11-02T23:15:00.002+11:002012-03-18T22:08:17.837+11:00<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 99.2px; font: 24.0px 'Hoefler Text'"><br /></p>Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-7918779671182454092011-10-19T16:32:00.002+11:002012-10-06T13:21:00.863+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Coverage</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Water channels part:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">your sweaty thumb slips </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">from the number 8, stunned. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Carpet stains where the remote drops </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">are a permanent reminder </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of your love for live TV: </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the asteroid fiascos,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">wearing ecliptic sunglasses</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">for moments when the earth stops.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The second we realise the atmos-</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">phere’s mass ascendancy, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">dark matter dominates </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">our deficient space:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">imploding into silence</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">with the pin-drop of a lens.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">It’s so titanic there’s nothing </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">you can do about it!</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">And the coverage: </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">time divided by velocity, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">quicker than light </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in its hyperbolic spell to reassure you </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">that all this wasted oxygen is</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">worth your wasted time. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">These kaleidoscopic tides</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">(image upon image)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">from the ground gaping up:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a shock of orange in a clear blue sky.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Again, from the smoke-</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">screen of the street: </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a shock of orange in a clear blue sky.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">And again, just to rub it in,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in case you’re entrenched </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in a glossy magazine:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a shock of orange in a clear blue sky.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">One more time </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">from the channel-changing </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">couch (terrorized):</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a shock of orange in a grey-blue sky.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <a href="http://www.swampwriting.com/?page_id=177">SWAMP</a>, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-72914353619905566422011-10-18T11:03:00.002+11:002012-10-06T13:21:47.825+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Parallels</span><span style="font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The intervals between trains are shrinking,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>streetlights shaking — </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>one or two blink out</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>with every repercussion.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Planes fly lower and lower,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>guard dogs whimper, and </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>every so often</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>a seismograph flutters</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>as if to warn us </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>that the orbits are out of whack,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>that waves rake the ocean floors</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">and the hairs on the backs of cats </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>stand on end<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>because something unparalleled </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>is about to happen.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Light a candle, stock the cupboard —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>alarms and sirens </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>have cancelled the silence.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Pay no attention to screams or the jitters —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>when someone bolts, everyone bolts.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;"> Whatever you say, say nothing </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">— </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>as a bystander</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>amongst the panic and the vomit,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>do nothing and nothing will bend.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>Southerly</i>, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-57603781126011468972011-10-17T17:11:00.002+11:002012-10-06T13:22:39.148+10:00<div style="font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 130%; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mannequins</span><span style="font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">If we don’t move, no one will</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">see us. The air-con will help us</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to lean forward, help us to make </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">headway. Regular news updates </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">from dozens of flat screens </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">could save us from our musing as</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">blow-dryer music in the hi-fi section </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">warms the backs of our necks. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">If we stand anaesthetised by the </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">cleaning lady’s spray gun, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">dressed in the latest, we might blend in, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">and late at night, when we’re blind, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">security guards will make love to us, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">though only with their torches. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">In the corners of the ceiling, next</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to the cameras, gleaming silver vents </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">will inhale our carbon dioxide, while </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the vents along the skirting boards</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">exhale, to keep it circulating, this</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">air we breathe on condition.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>FourW</i>, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-46246386191121127982011-10-15T11:38:00.006+11:002012-10-06T13:24:36.908+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> Aubade</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">In sticky haze under dappling trees </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>shadows and limelight</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>coagulate</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>after coalescing </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>through the night.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Emerging to a lurid sun </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>that slides up into the deep,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>lifting its crusty eyelid,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I walk </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>down a pointless street </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>of morning people,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>dumb pets </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and coffee. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The stale alcohol </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and cigarette breath, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the scintillating light </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and compression of garbage </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">have a Doppler effect </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>on my stagger </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>so I skip, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">but no matter how fast I skip </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>away from sidelong glances, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>round corners, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>under shopfronts,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">impersonating shadows </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>to outfox the light,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I can’t escape the smell</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>catching up with me </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>of someone else </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>on my skin.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <a href="http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/aubade/"><i>Meanjin</i></a>, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-57920742986820838262011-10-14T11:02:00.003+11:002012-10-06T13:25:08.183+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Library Animals</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">(after Shakespeare)</span></i></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">She follows me up</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to the eighth floor of the library</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">where eerie dust,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">shushed by a coy</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">draught, kindles</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">amongst the shelves.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">We snake in and out </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of the aisles, looking for a corner </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">or a space as dark</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">as a room in bedlam for us</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to become the rude myth </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of our birthright. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">But with no Venus glove</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">for entering the nest </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of the phoenix</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">we’re both fair game.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">And the idea of it, of flesh, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">almost becomes an impediment: </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the spiced rivers of her hair </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in our lips as we kiss;</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the knuckles of her spine</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">like the rivets in her dress —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">obstructions, abstractions, words</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in the way — that is </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">until our burning will touches</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">the metallic shelves</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">like lava meeting glacier, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">bumping the goose </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in both of us,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">steaming up the windows</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">that turn a blinkered eye </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to the odds of being caught</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">red-handed.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“Put some more English on it,”</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">she whispers, with</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">my finger on her forepart,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">as unbridled, I risk the faux </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">pun: “Are you a woman </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">given to lie...?”</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">But that’s not</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">how she does it now, alive</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in the dusky back </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">passages of the library,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">where the dimmed fluoro </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">and deep shadow </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">bisect our civil demeanours,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">where we succumb at last</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to our lower halves,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">making love like centaurs,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a discreet but riveting</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">performance</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to a hushed and studied audience </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">of thousands laid </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">before us in many positions,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">though mainly standing up</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">and jacketless, front </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">to back.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published on the <a href="http://redroomcompany.org/poet/toby-fitch/"><i>Red Room</i></a>, 2011 and</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">partly in The Sydney Morning Herald)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-50777620981116290232011-10-13T10:50:00.004+11:002012-10-06T13:32:10.565+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Tangents</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">A drive up the street is light, is a boon —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>is full of female matadors.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The moonbeam is a tangent</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>glancing off his eye juice —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a turn of the head, a crick in the neck, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>tearing the muscle in his chest.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">She’s an epiphany — the fifth element</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>setting off dominoes —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>prang after prang into prang</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">as reflectors sing the car-crash song</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>and she flickers — a film projector</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">batting her eyelids at bull-bars </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>like tremors after an earthquake,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">tearing the chest muscles of other men </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>(any man with a memory) </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">up and down the strip.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>Everyday Static</i>, 2010)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-11859839655091337412011-10-12T10:16:00.002+11:002012-10-06T13:25:58.151+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Winded on a Trampoline</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">I clutch at clouds, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">burn my brow on sunbeams,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">lick blue moons with a rainbow-scythe.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">But as day caves away </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">a wind whips through my stomach </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">and I’m dumped in its wake.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Magpies brush low over cut grass. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Thrumming cicadas numb the wet sandstone.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">A pair of sneakers over powerlines.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Purple and gold in the clouds above.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Some stars beginning to stir.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(published in <i>Visible Ink</i>, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px 'Hoefler Text'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-37138303138443356632011-10-10T16:45:00.006+11:002012-10-06T13:26:29.837+10:00<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 180%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Inter Alios</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;">(after Aeschylus)</span></i></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">We fall </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">for each other' / clashing </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;">colours /</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> orbit </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">each heart / drunk & adored / libation</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">bearing all / sneak </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">up on each other / aloof but obsessed w/</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">enigmas beneath the skin</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;"> imbrue </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">and invade / brood then turn pink as it</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">brews within us / the way a</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;">glass of milk turns / </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">a single drop of blood /</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">into an ambulance spinning / en </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;">route to a mop-up / </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">curdling in the grave</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">we inter each other in turn</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">in / alien / suffused </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">swooning </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(previously published in <a href="http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2011/07/toby-fitch-inter-alios-after-aeschylus.html"><i>Otoliths</i></a>, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div>
Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6313844469657119528.post-86950241261061840862011-01-25T19:06:00.010+11:002012-10-06T13:37:34.021+10:00<div style="font: 24.0px Hoefler Text; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="font: 18.0px Hoefler Text; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> On the Slink</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span>Bottles in gutters,</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">alley cats on the slink </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>under streetlamps that crystallise</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span>in the corners of my eyes —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span></span>shopping trolleys gliding by</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>like giant legless ice skates —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>this brittle night taken out of the fridge —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>it’s spring but cold still, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>still as glass.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>Sobering up, a breeze —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>if I cast a rock up through the air, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>between the wires, the tooting owls, </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>beyond the rooftops</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>into the twisting funnel of stars —</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span>I could almost crack open the night </span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span>and swig.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">(highly commended in the <i>Aesthetica </i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Creative Works </i>Competition, 2011)</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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Toby Fitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15920898702472153571noreply@blogger.com