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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #8/thyla8k-kg AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 8 The Poetry of Kevin Gillam Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Kevin Gillam by photographer unknown, 2001. I ...women do the I little boats I long hand I my town I autumn I three ponds I (untitled) I ...women do the women do the re membering, social glue. wo men do the walls and floor in blood and bleach. women flit and web and wean. in season, women shed, grow in rings. wo men do the kneading, grieving, the remembering little boats it takes an age to get back like little boats back to where I've been infected rowed out too far with place and purpose widows have tiptoed purpose such that unravelling and sifting into takes the splintery sea an age long hand dream, dalliance fuse into sky, overlap in scrawls of cloud making the lean-to shed more lean than promise. beyond the stock-yards wind-chafed soil, ponds gone bracken, an orphaned gum. she hadn't expected this, time, terra-firma in cunning duet, the long-hand of history indecipherable Published in Five Bells (Australia). my town in my town in my little town the wind whips the Sound sand sinned in my town silos sit squat and red dread dead in my town its not my town my town trapped between two hills in my town jet- ty is only truth left planks clunking atop feet fiend find my town way back then once upon a town is my town gulls cut loose lose lies my town is- lands splotched spilt gills on the jetty gulp- ing sucking in my town in my town weekends wheelies the drive through the carton froth fright fights in my town flayed flinched in my little town night knife life lost in my town in my little town Published in Other Gravities (Sunline Press, 2003). autumn the grapes have long rotted your subtle veins of soft creek lisp and beat.  we lie all unexplored, yet my tongue is cut wood rain took the last of the crop and I hear petals unlatch. we touch like cripples in the gallery of your still interiors ants have forgotten to hold my bones in place, you caressing but corroding bridge upon bridge, us shot away wizened skins drop three ponds there's a difference in me that wants to forget ritual, sweetness of same absence carried, heavier the having you here only your song long shot through and call it ponding what you're doing, three ponds, not stagnant, shadowed, still as now (untitled) history seeping, darkening the dressing, 'til coagulating in Noongar song lines, suturing time to sky and land to whites and why About the Poet Kevin Gillam Kevin Gillam is a West Australian writer, cellist, orchestral conductor and secondary-school music teacher. Since completing a Graduate Diploma in English (Creative Writing) at Curtin University, he has had poems published in numerous Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and U.K. journals, including Meanjin, Overland, Coppertales, SideWalk, Western Review, Five Bells, Southern Review and Famous Reporter. In 2000 he was Emerging-Writer-in-Residence at Tom Collins' House, and was granted the same position at the Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre in 2002. His first volume of poetry, entitled Other Gravities and published by SunLine Press (Perth, R.R.P. $25, hardback) was launched in May 2003, and in September of that year he worked as Writer on the Road for the WA State Literature Centre, conducting workshops and readings throughout the Great Southern Region of WA.    [Above] Photo of Kevin Gillam by photographer unknown, 2001. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.8 (September, 2003)