Jill Jones

RECURRINGS

 
the eternal return goes routine
and I'm living on the doll

the eternal return goes rubbish
and I'm loaning out the dolphin

the eternal return goes rugby
and I'm loopy on the downs

the eternal return goes ruin
and I'm logging on the double

the eternal return does a runner
and I'm lopping off the dominance

 

NIGHT MANTRAS

 
learn a languish


send off your poverty


lax and lax


without timing or sweeping




Splash!




DISQUIET


It’s as if there’s something wrong
as if I’d misplaced
the tidbit, the prank, the idea
the idyll, the mark, the penknife
the marmoset, the maths, the tilde
the tigress, the pound and pence, the toast
the powder, the ticket, the idiom

another marketplace, another matrix
a tip, a pepperpot, a mask

 

AFTER MEMORIAMS
  Closing time debates the
patterned pain nor can
songs necessary whisper
always write horizon
travelling and currents.

Take better joy.
Take water’s thousand.
This book of night stings
over wrack into my mind
can set new travelling
thus hard true.

 

TO THE HARBOUR

will
go down to the blue
with presence at the last hill

may start at late thick summer
load fume cars park’s old shade
can’t buy it raw city bright

survive afternoon past the pale memorial
peace dark pool slips by late
crossing with sun to the west

open cathedral air curved arcs fountain
drunks prelates lovers lawyers hauling briefs
alien inside you once knew water

stone bronze gleam mist promise eternity
centuries and buildings beautiful blind glass
look vertical city sandstone blocks dream

mimic New Worlds dizzy systems convenience
spoke something fastidious ‘going to town’
moments brush windows immigrants before jackets

simple unwearable accurate razors fit nothing
inside suitcases of mysterious mottled leather
silken perfume nerves the road sweeps

top the hill sense the sea
sailors on moment fluid exile turning
passing vices rope wharves lured commerce

flux and carelessness ignores censor feelings
captured by older drag than history
edge to pull we run towards

  

© Annette Willis

Jill Jones' most recent book is Ash Is Here, So Are Stars, published by Walleah Press in 2012. She also published in 2012 Senses Working Out, a Vagabond Press Rare Object chapbook. She won the 2003 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize for Screens Jets Heaven, and the 1993 Mary Gilmore Award for The Mask and the Jagged Star. She is currently collaborating with photograopher Annette Willis and sound artist Solange Kershaw on a new multi-media project.