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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                   #3/thyla3k-cm AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 3 The Poetry of Chris Mansell Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Chris Mansell by photographer unknown, 2000. I How sweet I Definition Poem: Pissed As A Parrot I One more missile for the road I On the railway near the sea I A hand in the mouth I The Cat Machine I How sweet how sweet you holding out to the camera a pair of small fish How sweet the curved lips of your eyebrows How sweet the too rapid beat of your heart against my chest  I said it's gone  too present would no longer How sweet I said there are things I must give up to keep myself while smirked a thumb to pocket lout a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do sending up my caring hands to your face How sweet you sitting at the bus stop and me watching from a secret place How sweet this calm anxious unconnectedness my irresponsible hands How sweet your flawed body How clean the black ink in your skull How you tried not to spill and the dark splashes merge with the pattern of the pillow case How terrible the wound you slipped from a pouch and gave to me How it burned my hands How sad to pass it back to you unread Published in Redshift/Blueshift (Five Islands Press, 1988). Definition Poem: Pissed As A Parrot For those of you who are etymologically inclined I would like to take this opportunity to explain to you the derivation of the expression pissed as a parrot. Sidney Baker in The Australian Language indexes          Paroo dog          Parrot          Parson's pox There is no entry under pissed. He also gives          Proverbial, come the          Piss, panther's and   Pseudoxy Parrot on page 55 is a sheep which has lost some of its wool. If the sheep's fly-blown it's a rosella. Wilkes in his Australian Dictionary of Colloquialisms lists only to piss in someone's pocket (refer Kylie Tennant, Bray, Hardy & Herbet) Pissant around (Dymphna Cusack) and Pissant, game as a. There is no mention of any parrot in any condition at all. In Collins English Dictionary (Australian edition) you will find definitions for          piss          piss about          Pissaro          piss artist and   piss off. Parrots appear in their psittaciformes capacity which I found meant having a short hooked bill, compact body, bright plumage, and an ability to mimic. It was not entirely clear whether this referred to birds. Parrot-fashion had nothing to do with anything. Roget's Thesaurus Nuttal's Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms Stillman's Poets Manual and Rhyming Dictionary Webster's Treasury of Synonyms, Antonyms and Homonyms and The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary were absolutely no help at all. I thought Usage & Abusage being by Partridge could be illuminating, but it appears that neither piss nor parrots are abused. I refused to consult Strunk's Elements of Style on the grounds that the backcover blurb has quotes from the Greensboro Daily News and The Telephone Engineers and Management Journal. But I went to afternoon tea in the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney at 4 pm on Thursday 6 November and there, Dr A.R. Lacey, physical chemist, Msc PhD, informed me, in his capacity as a true blue, down to earth, dinky-di, grass root Aussie that when working on his horse stud in the Wingecarribee Shire he had observed that Gang Gang cockatoos fall with paralytic suddenness from the branches of Hawthorn bushes after ingesting berries, Incredibly, The Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds makes no mention of this. Published in The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets (Penguin Australia, 1986) and The Oxford Book of Australian Light Verse (Oxford University Press, 1991). One more missile for the road The last straw is silent wilts on the camel's back It is the one for the drowning The last straw defines but cannot be defined until after the event It is singular. It is fashionable. The last straw lacks truth and owns it all possesses and depletes the colour grey It downs cities politicians, brass bands features in betrayals unnumbered in brick wood and fibro huts and houses The last straw burns last in the haystack It is the straw the rich use to tempt camels through needle eyes It is indifferent to the wealthy not friends with the poor fires fear like a weapon the last straw is unbiased non-committal not responsible The last straw will be found floating face down in a fractured pool of Evian water. Published in Redshift/Blueshift (Five Islands Press, 1988). On the railway near the sea no one fears sharks any more   one hand rises to control the motion of the train   the sun controls the light-strewn sea and sharp points of lights line up against the eye all that remains is the ocean it passes like a train all that is left of the forest is fifty, one hundred, palms each singular on the green sunny cow-eaten slopes of civilization butting the train towns elbow the track the trains splat out final documents  the words sing in the machine phrases become stranded in the doppler effect sirens sing  islands dance the bovine thrillers eat up the country and you raise your hand to   wave and the train leaves the station Published in Hatbox (Australia). A hand in the mouth once language was a clear pleasure now it makes yellow clots in my mouth the sheer fall of stutter and tangles of bedsheet words betray my tongue there are things colourless nouns too terrible for afternoons and unendurable verbs prod past my tongue I am unabled my adjective noun verbs (see how the placemarks slip) I am unabled my tongue lashes itself to any passing adverb spit slips redly from my mouth where poems ought to be I am unabled it is talc and drool a folded tongue against a shallow palette barbed teeth and verb proposition article noun I want to tie to the tie break tongue harvest brilliant I am I am unabled every thing snaps in the yellow afternoon there are verbs too sharp to say my lover fails as language dies all the verbs are going I thought I'd saved remember and prepare but they have gone I hold hard to the last things: cumulus undergrowth bone Published in Stalking the Rainbow (PressPress, 2002). The Cat Machine she had spent all her sunday afternoons patiently building it out of old matchsticks lining up their used black stumps head to head the machine blew out words of the subtlest intonation over the radio-drenched backyards of suburbs it blew out hard fashionable words it repeated backstreet in the repetitious backstreets it blew smoke over industrial inner metropolitan areas it blew abstract shapes of saxophone notes down major highways its old pine sticks creaked words of consolation for the elderly the machine of words was built by an old woman with cats for company they flung themselves insolently down when she turned the machine's brass handle they didn't care for it it stole their hot cat breath returned it full of bones Published in Day Easy Sunlight Fine in Hot Collation (Penguin, 1994). About the Poet Chris Mansell Chris Mansell was born in Sydney, Australia. She has a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney. In 1978 she founded the literary magazine Compass poetry & prose which she edited until 1987. From 1987 until early 1989 she was a part-time lecturer in creative writing at the University of Wollongong. In 1988 she attended the National Institute of Dramatic Arts' (NIDA) Playwright's Studio. In 1989 she was a full-time lecturer in creative writing at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur. In 1993 she took up a Writing Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. The following year she was awarded an Australia Council Community Writer's Fellowship in the Shoalhaven district of New South Wales. Her poetry collection Day Easy Sunlight Fine was short-listed for the National Book Council's Banjo Awards. She is mentor to four poets under the Australia Council Mentorship Scheme and has just finished a prose manuscript called The Choice of Memory.    [Above] Photo of Chris Mansell by photographer unknown, 2000. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.3 (March, 2001)