Naomi Jane Wrightson

 

Reg Lynch - Bourke Street Bouquet

 

BenWinspear - 4 views of a stage emerging from blackout

 

 

At Woodford Festival

Three days of rain.
Smell of rotting vegetation.
Cane toads around tank stands.
Black butterflies
the size of small birds.
Tibetan monks
walk unfazed
through the downpour.
Their robes appear dry.
Feral girls
offer cheap mangoes
at the payphones.
They head for the Chai Tent
for stamina food to keep
them dancing all night.
A Balkan singer recharges
her battery-operated wheelchair
to get to her next performance.
Another musician complains
that she’s used all the power
and now he can’t shave.
In the distance
the sound of scrambled jazz
as a grand piano
sinks in the mud.

 

Karen Knight

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Ross Donlon

 

Summer, & Nothin’ Gets Done

She climbed barefoot through the bedroom window
and licentiously stuck a Bob Marley record on
“’cause it’s summer,” she said “and nothin’ gets done.”
And the beer tastes like water,
and the water tastes like cryptosperidium.
as good taste takes a back seat and yobs don shorts and thongs
as the Goths sweat like pasty faced martyrs in the storms of vivid white.
And Westie kids pull bongs in a parked Monaro at Bondi Beach
as the local wax heads watch on and sneer as they dive bleach blonde into the ocean.
And the dead flesh of European foul rots in the flat heavy heirs of Suburbia.
as families get together for Xmas that p’haps were better left apart
and uncomfortable questions get asked
about bank jobs, boyfriends and barbituates
as the blood fills their brains and the beer and cheap Chardonnay fills their veins.
And bottles get smashed in the faces of Byronites
as working men attempt to make up for one year of enslavery
with one night of unschooled decadence.
And works in progress go on the back burner
and no one can think straight for another six months ’cause its summer, and nothin’ gets done
And we sit back in a little black flat in Erskineville
watching the happy mozzies and cockroaches fly through the air
as they think how they never had it so good
or at least for as long as their caramel brains can remember.
And as the day wears on and the two of us become one with the sponge of our mattress
thanks to the fetta cheese of our sweat
we listen to the local jazz show on the radio and exchange Berocca bacis
’till I convince you to reach for your mobile phallus and call in sick for the afternoon shift,
then let a smile creep across my dial as I hear you answer your dim-witted boss with
“’cause it’s summer, and nothin’ gets done.”

Benito di Fonzo