CHRIS BROWN
away from home
bowties or butterflies:
the sauce of your choice.
an umbrella collapses.
the chairs are inseparable.
-
this display a glass
bottomed gondola.
model train derailment
halfway into the mountain
-
like restless in ‘the
method of immersion’
la lingua madre
surfacing for breath.
-
bus stops pine needles carpet
the terra rossa tennis court.
imminent arrivals
text-to-destination.
-
grammatically the tutor tells me
you cannot enter the walls –
stick figure stuck
in a stone cell to illustrate.
-
poems of place.
souvenir this that
his own little
piece of vesuvius.
-
up/down some
(unsigned?) street in pistoia
reception deserts us returns.
digging deep for lost vocab.
-
but cinema centrale
settles it:
visiting mono-linguists
wilt in the provinces
-
uncorrupted/
unembalmed
not much now
to hang the gown on
-
most frequently
asked question?
what to feed the children
death or fairytales.
-
makes two of us out of a tower’s
skinny staircase
the renaissance
spills into the backyard.
-
radio guide
re-tells the tale
of the twins
history and hearsay
-
somewhere more specific
than piazza napoleone?
…hotel universo.
see you at two.
-
this winter air frigid
as a pen chained to the bank desk
handwriting flatlining
in fingerless gloves
-
still scrawls my “xmas
high-rise haiku”:
inflatable santas
hung from the balconies/with care.
-
(bit rich?) as benedict declares
the way we worship
obscene wealth
a modern sin.
-
finest rain
stencils awnings in the square
lavoro in corso
loose cobblestone vaguely cubist
-
thank you gesture
the eyes of the mime.
could’ve/should’ve
squeezed the accordion in.
-
almost a memory
that pillion rider’s
shirt-tail billow
ing into the past.
-
in your dreams!
a skybed absorbs local turbulence.
flying nervously in circles
above sydney suspense (viewed literally)
Chris Brown lives in Newcastle, Australia. His poetry has appeared in
a number of online and print journals including, most recently, cordite, overland
and The Age. He has work forthcoming with mascara poetry and foam:e.