I Home I About I Contact I Guidelines I Directory I World I Peace I Charity I Education I Quotes I Solutions I Photo Gallery I Archives I Links I

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)

I Home I About I Contact I Guidelines I Directory I World I Peace I Charity I Education I Quotes I Solutions I Photo Gallery I Archives I Links I