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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                #12/thyla12k-jw AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 12 The Poetry of Jane Williams Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Jane Williams by Elizabeth Williams, year unknown. I Alms I Reality TV I Refugee I Exodus I Moment I Monologue on the inexplainable I Alms she is walking toward you head bowed hands forming a bowl shape as if to receive alms only the closer she gets the fuller the bowl seems her steps leave the ground and suddenly here she is looking down and you see she draws the same breath shares the same pulse as the runty body of the bird she holds and her eyes are tiny port holes of light through which can be seen once upon a time when you too took the long way around the ant hill ate with the midnight mouse and suddenly your heart is not in the cull and for the first time you find yourself unsure reaching out making a wish the light cutting off your hand the bowl falling breaking taking flight Published in The Last Tourist (Five Islands Press, 2006). Reality TV Any minute now King Kong will appear beating his chest Against man's inhumanity Any minute now A phoenix rising from the towering inferno Any minute now Evidence of special effects Any minute now A trail of credits to reassure us Audience participation wasn't necessary Any minute now The everyday bodies will stop falling To their un-scripted deaths Any minute now The TV will turn itself off like a third eye That's seen too much it can't touch Any minute now Ghosts will scramble the air waves Forever marking us with their SOS Any minute now. Published in The Last Tourist (Five Islands Press, 2006). Refugee after two years in Port Headland detention centre he will be sent back to a labour camp of his own country where if his family are good and not too poor he will get enough to eat until he has paid for his crimes for stealing a government boat for taking his brother with him and for the image they held of this lucky country for now he holds the telephone receiver like a conch shell ready to give ready to receive he prays to the good heart of his social worker you he singsongs you like to marry me? Published in The Last Tourist (Five Islands Press, 2006). Exodus some will say they have waited an eternity get out the good silver polished daily their hope chests spilling over with ... well ... with hope the word chosen tempting them like never before others will say it was the last thing they expected from life and rising to the occasion like born agains be the first to admit they always left room for an each way bet others still will take it in their stride adapting like a sixth toe not noticing anything different at all until someone calls their name in a mother tongue they never knew was theirs and suddenly they are running then flying all the way home shedding skin after skin as they go Published in The Last Tourist (Five Islands Press, 2006). Moment two girls get on a bus wearing matching mini skirts and fake fur collared jackets when the bus driver asks what fare? they whisper child like it's a great shame they won't have to bear for much longer one or two more years maybe already their heels lift them one whole inch over the legal age they sit crossing and uncrossing legs locking and unlocking mobile phones like they're expecting important calls they speak to each other in the coded half sentences of the cool beginning each one with the word like as if reality is relative they raise the volume every one and then to emphasise brand names or bemoan such injustices as a forfeited allowance or being grounded when the bus slows to a stop in the middle of the road and the driver mumbles c'mon boys move it along the girls look out the window and catch a flurry of orange strange birds in slow motion about to take flight but in no hurry and before they can check themselves all pretence at sophistication crumbles as they cry out in unison oh look! monks! monks! Published in The Last Tourist (Five Islands Press, 2006). Monologue on the inexplainable it has something to do with the kind of stillness required to attract a butterfly to land and those times we might spontaneously combust if touched how a heart can freeze right in the middle of a heat wave and the swan whose song we mimic to demonstrate inconsolable pain it has something to do with a town becoming an ocean in which the drifting poet is in danger of drowning and just to get her bearings approaches a church of childhood religion and through the doorway sees a congregation of six or eight huddled in a life boat and one of them turns a big face soft and damp and the poet thinks if I'm invited I will but the eyes in the face just stare out at nothing as she floats by it has something to do with these words being padding for a meaning that can only be discovered if kept safe from intellect and desire Published in The Last Tourist (Five Islands Press, 2006). About the Poet Jane Williams Jane Williams was born in 1964 in England. Jane's poems have been widely published since the early 1990's in Australian literary journals and newspapers. She was an editor of the Australian poetry journal ars poetica in the mid 1990's. Jane has conducted creative writing workshops in secondary schools, for people with psychiatric disabilities and for the general public. She has held Writers' Residencies at the Varuna Writers' Centre, the Booranga Writers' Centre and within the Victorian Education System. She has been a guest poet at the Melbourne Poetry Festival and the Tasmanian Poetry Festival. Jane has received financial support for editing and writing through Arts Victoria grants. Her first collection of poems outside temple boundaries (Five Islands Press 1998) received the FAW Anne Elder Award. Jane's other awards include the 2005 Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize and the 2005 D.J O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship. She lives in Tasmania with her two daughters where she writes poetry and prose. Jane has a collection of short stories Other Lives due out from Ginninderra Press in 2007.    [Above] Photo of Jane Williams by Elizabeth Williams, year unknown. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.12 (June, 2007)