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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                   #1/thyla1k-pm AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 1 The Poetry of Peter Minter Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Peter Minter by John Tranter, 1999. IMonocausotaxophilia: Foam Days I Lizard Arabesque I Moth Star I That Sweet Chelys Sound I Wish Bone Discontinuity I Monocausotaxophilia Foam Days Waves topple and roll over, spray may affect visibility gale force nine whipped by Treachery as dogs holler and birds bunker down for foam days leave no apprentices no difference anywhere the shoreline, what of it barrels over feeds sand up aerated salt and lissom weed strands fly into sockets of fish heads and fox skulls top dressing speech or other limbed white on the cross of some kind wave snapped off. Lizard Arabesque At the end of the yearning stone, enflamed by the prodigy of hell, your skin is another day of words warming, clear and deep as you wake me. Look, you will say at this stone! Presence renews itself! turns out the limit of air in the body, paraphrased by shadow. I repeat everything, over the fence, over the river, the tail lost is a sign of beauty. Waiting, the lizard is still, a small pulse in the neck audible here expands and contracts to surrender myself again to the earth. Moth Star Like a star with a hand behind it, the lost body we share on the other edge, light dust and the sheen of camouflage. I lie again on wet grass, where dogs read the earth's hollow noise each day and magpies couple & one child sustained by mobility hook me to the ground, space expanding below, the motionless planet bright threshold where wings where the dogs chase living long since the birds fly up, the signs murmur deep unevenness. And from the hemisphere of doubt, some bright spark inconsolable attractiveness, the thief unable to imagine a soft underbelly shielding the limits of increase. That Sweet Chelys Sound Those broad browed cattle moan sweetly when they're dead leaning against trees below the window. Scarcely knowing sweat a fitting rhythm bred to the day's back, motion on the blind rock we sing a long time but never here again, shoulders stronger than naming, dark sounds married to stillness. Take the clavicle you tell me, wrap it in the arms I give you for reaching one song promised by the window bomboras erupting time and time again. Wish Bone Discontinuity That viscous integer out of sequence here, another long breach we parallel in quarantine, leave our footprints in the sand hard as fireworks temporality construed as ephemeral vision and each step as lust is. An impression in our eyes distributes the flying, an osprey hover through afternoon salt, last light cool as a rock cod. Off the bone, dunes on the midden slip into spinifex corridors, your old heel a difficult measure for landing breath bleached over one spark from which we will deliver the world. Published in Empty Texas (Paperbark Press, 1999). About the Poet Peter Minter Peter Minter, born in 1967, is a poet, editor and publisher living in Sydney, New South Wales. His first collection, Rhythm in a Dorsal Fin, was shortlisted for the 1996 New South Wales Premiers' Prize for Poetry, and he has since co-founded Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review and edited the Varuna New Poetry broadsheet series. His work has appeared in Landbridge: Contemporary Australian Poetry (FACP 1999) and Catalyst (Folio(Salt) 2000) and in numerous Australian and international journals. He is poetry editor for Meanjin, a contributing editor to Boxkite, and editor of the forthcoming Varuna Literary Review. He has completed co-editing, with Michael Brennan, Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets, an anthology to be published by Paper Bark Press. His awards include the 2000 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for Poetry, with which he will be travelling to Cambridge as an invited guest at the 2000 Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetics.    [Above] Photo of Peter Minter by John Tranter, 1999. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.1 (March, 2000)