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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                 #10/thyla10k-jb AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 10 The Poetry of Janine Baker Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Janine Baker by photographer unknown, 1989. I South of My Daze I Night Men I Minimum Opus I Angel on the Train I All Ordinary Nett Result I Bush Terror I The Ferris Wheel Man I South of My Daze (A Modern Apology to Judith Wright) Leaving the beery palmscape and Red Sun of the North-Ay we shoot down the tarry left leg of the New England Range t'ward the target in the Bay. There's a board promise near the road's end that we'll Enjoy More from a Bigger Smoke, in a city with six million creative urges, dissolving in front of computer screens, bringing country sheep to city slaughter, Counting its Blessings on a frequency chart. There's work for all, if we want to build Office Blocks or sell the city till it hits the Top Ten and bow, to the North East across water from the colonised edge of the invaded heart. Night Men hot summer nights in the city are for men: for wheeled men on the prowl in red metal jackets elbows slung over panel-beaten doors sailing dark streets with nowhere to anchor for sure-footed men with vacant swivel heads jangling keys with eyes peeled open for a leg in a skirt, or even an ankle for huddled Southern Greek men in a greasy dim-lit cafe shrouded in smoke studying cards, over coffee and baklava for troubled young men who tag territory with paint (like a dog does with piss) and tip their caps to danger for loose-lipped crew-cut men in a kerbside collective booting poles and phone boxes with no place to store their anger hot summer nights in the city are for men but not for me it seems for I am a woman so I'll sweat at home stifling waiting for winter. Published in Spindrift (Australia). Minimum Opus Work is..... draining the coinslots that are filled with the hopes of a hundred punters striking the gavel to decide the fate of a social misfit washing the windows of a forty-floor building in a smog-filled city feeding and hosing a lawn so it grows up enough to be mowed back down Work is...... doling out pills to hypochondriacs with phantom ills making food colours that spawn the attacks of a million asthmatics delivering chips in a two-tonne truck to the junkfood delis signing forms you haven't read and don't believe a word of granting funds for spurious works to agents you've never heard of Work is making time wasting time taking time Work is filling in the days between life and death Published in Spindrift (Australia). Angel on the Train An angel of God caught the 8 AM train. I could tell she was ethereal from her pearly gate smile and the way she caught the eye of every sinner in sight:- fretful kids of suspicious mums; knit-browed men (wearing World Business on pin-striped shoulders); book-bound students, and freak-show youths. Isn't it a gorgeous morning!! she gushed, sidling up to a Sinner Unaware. (God's Army gets around in white, I observed, from her squeaky-clean sneakers to her pure cotton smock). The angel invoked an other-worldly look - I'm a friend of Jesus, and I live by His book. An angel of God caught the 8 AM train, and set about her mission to spread the Word Divine; I wished her needless luck with her heedless conversion of the morning train persons from Marino to Brighton - it's 10 minutes from here to the stop we all alight on. All Ordinary Nett Result Business is the art of moving money from those who need it to those who don't. I've never understood the motors in the heads of the pin-striped Suits with Araldite smiles stuck to the leaves of the Financial News. Business is the section that lines my cat's tray. I maintain my contempt for Mining Giants Petrol Magnates Burger Chains and Soft-Drink Kings whose products eat holes in the Earth and its people I think that liquid assets rain down from the clouds and blue chips are made of corn the futures market has crystals and tarot and interest is a romantic term internal buoyancy and marginal pressure sound more like a bed than a bank plastic money comes freely in games capital is a sentence starter. Frankly, I don't care for profits and shares debentures or investment data. Business is the art of moving money from the masses to the few, and the fewer. If business is the bottom line it leads all the way to the sewer. Published in Spindrift (Australia). Bush Terror Over there (where I live) the city streets are my fearless friends every burglary, carjack, dank alley, stabbing, are tools of the beat that guard my heart. I'm safe, in ceaseless traffic danger, content with lights glaring, the stare of strangers, and I'm careless at night, especially in carparks. Over here (where I could die) the bush looms dark, the trees full of menace, every crack of a twig is a shot in my head. The bats are mocking me, squeaking my requiem, and the black shrubs confer: you don't belong here. Worst of all is the devil-dark lake - I daren't even risk immersing an ankle. When the bush trip's over and I'm back in the city, for my birth in its stone blocks I'm sure-as-hell thankful. The Ferris Wheel Man There's the Fair Man tending his wheel. Crimson eyes glow dull beside his neon booth but light up   when you want to go for a spin. Like a ride, luv? Take you 'round the world in ten minutes for two dollars fifty he grins. On a warm night the Fair Man's never out of gear but tonight   in a biting wind, and frost which hangs on carnival awnings   Fair Man swigs a hip flask and scans the thin crowd   for side-show strollers. The ferris wheel man is my only fairground attraction. Coming up, luv? I close my eyes in the giddy rush of anti-gravity and howl at the moon.   Eight minutes later, it's over. Wish there were more brave ones like you, luv, I' been standing 'ere like a stunned mullet fightin' the wind for three days. Fair Man, to give so much time for so little return   is the bravest feat of all. Later, in the warm cocoon of the seaside chippery I stare out at the cold light of the old fairground and there's Fair Man revolving on his ferris wheel spinning solo   in the dark. Published in Poetrix (Australia). About the Poet Janine Baker Janine Baker is a South Australian mother, scientist, and poet (in no particular order!). She was born in Queensland, and raised as an itinerant, living in various cities, towns and on islands around Australia and New Guinea, for the first 2 decades of life. Environmental change, human isolation, and scales of time and space are recurring themes in her work. anine's favourite Australian poets are Bruce Dawe, Ian C. Smith, MTC Cronin, Jean Frances, and Richard Hillman. About 50 of Janine's poems have been published in various poetry magazines and journals (such as Spindrift and Poetrix), and a couple have appeared in the Friendly Street Reader anthologies. Her work has been published in a number of issues of Centoria, SideWalk, Vernacular, and the on-line publication Divan. Janine read regularly at South Australian poetry venues during the late 1990s, and her work has also been heard on radio in Sydney. A first collection has also been accepted for publication.    [Above] Photo of Janine Baker by photographer unknown, 1989. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.10 (September, 2004)