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                                                                                                                                    #5/thyla5k-gr AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 5 The Poetry of Gig Ryan Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Gig Ryan by Jenni Mitchell, 1997. I By water I The Buddha Speaks I Kings Cross Patrol I Real Estates I Research I By Water Wrap yourself in the tight dead cocoon of your skin. Did you think it had gone? His face and the slither of smile all over the room's edge. His face beneath a pane of water. Everyone's nice. But who wants to get married? The music jerks up. Outside you can look at the water. Here comes that man just dying to tell you his aspirations. I want to throw up. Where do they make those people? The men are in love with dead women. I will blow the soil from your green face, he says. Prop her up. Who's going to notice? The men cry in a glossy cemetery. My fleet of dreams will see me home from the shy charmers, from his bright death. Half my memory is dream. I remember his third face washing across night. You are water. You are the shivering museum glass. Published The Division of Anger (Transit Press, 1981). The Buddha Speaks I have reached Nirvana. I have no desires. I don't want to see you dead anymore or alive. This broad uninhabited plateau is heavenly, really. I have eliminated the possibility of pain. The slopes are crawling with pain. Any movement, after all, is futile, so I have cut down on aid generally and talked myself out of violent feelings, like a dense disciple not listening, or worse, sweeping up everything you say and carefully sweeping it into his mouth's dump, the words that is. Those who ask are fools to begin with so I let my wisdom come out, illustrating it with little pictures, and my sayings touch those only who are truly alert. The fools go away no wiser with their lists and prayers. And my body sits quietly, emptied of passions. Published in Manners of an Astronaut (Hale & Iremonger, 1984). Kings Cross Pastoral When she remembers every chumpy thing The baby weather hurts her, the sick sun At home a dead blind flaps from its joint She goes on, like it's the latest reason or excuse and hibernates with pity's taxied screen around her I could cop it if it worked She jilts the door, roneo'd with debts Thought protects you from the street's chattels the sky passes like a stick A regular tip, his crinkled rites of love Joy cacks itself laughing and with these crimes I shut the door having gone off pity The heart's anchor's dust now when he shows up harmless, dishonest, recent A car is better than a tree Voices fall on the city's spine and crack. Published in Excavation (PanPicador, 1990). Real Estates 1. Cheerful Real Estate Agents flash through the apt real estate their knack and imprecation canvas the roll-up stove what a jaunt, the doll windows She turns the ropey key The application form questions you on the universe's history Upstairs they do their nuptials. Here we hold a totally minor referendum on where to spill and increment Your Veronica memory holds his Shinto face that when I saw had urged me to a crown of wit he shucks in the hardening sun around the harbour's huge resort and never see anyone The corridors finger silently along the numbered doors her white and turquoise body in the slave walls the drive-in temple windows Six floors down death frills the green pool's vacuous beauty Lifts jangle or swoop his slippery violin amongst the brawling TV sets The stairwell laundered like a garden Outside gangs of rubbish guard the useful block 2. Across the road from pool the Coronet Fish Markets fade At home's a dud Cockroaches huddle on the wall like flowers He spits his life's lungs through intermittently like a cigarette the rattling tunnel of his sleep that here no odour hides I spray the poisonous air, his sleep of "mess and derision" bald radios play from every room while on television a leader's doctored face confronts failure for the last time He renders to the party and resigns unguarded finally, the advisers let him fidget or explain The sizzling oil's surface rucks and webs a stroppy pan from another flat an old man says "Don't argue love" brushing his airless indoor skin All sleep broken. On sticky walls cockroaches form dark corsages. I walk down to the grey timid gentle blades of water tied boats prick and cross Junkies deafly march and roll from deal to deal You can hear each other dream next door his laddered metal cough My heart my brain are all locked up Published in Pure and Applied (Paper Bark Press, 1998). Research 1. It was always dinner then a film I thought to top it in his public conversation where it wheeled Breakfast was a lark, jammed and coincided from the dreams to fortress like a couple I couldn't get the hook or when it was Penultimately I had to blank Another day to quail, a vice to con for him Freedom was a drink as if it killed me When can I return to where I lived? 2. She polishes her imprimatur They keel and part as if I were a saint Coins clack down the ledges. Ships nostalgically turn I stare into the dribbling rainbow's oil spill conjuring my future Flames splash the casino. Gentle machines water the streets Slaves sew my clothes outside the law I enjoy the government art, visionary and affirming, and undiagnosed life Published in Pure and Applied (PaperBark Press, 1998). About the Poet Gig Ryan Gig Ryan was born in 1956. Her first book of poems, The Division of Anger, appeared in 1981 and was co-winner of the Anne Elder Poetry Award. Her other books of poetry include; The Division of Anger (1981), Manners of an Astronaut (1984), The Last Interior (1986), Excavation (1990), Pure and Applied (1998) and Heroic Money (2001). In 1988 she was awarded a Writer's Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Gig writes songs for her band, Driving Past. Gig Ryan's fifth book of poetry Pure and Applied won the Victorian Premier's Award for poetry in 1999. She is poetry editor at The Age, Melbourne, and a freelance reviewer. Gig lives in Melbourne, Victoria.    [Above] Photo of Gig Ryan by Jenni Mitchell, 1997. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.5 (March, 2002)