Tony Beyer
Through the Mallee with Ern
he whinged and grizzled
the whole way
window up too hot
window down too dusty
his lungs and the garage door
scraping
every time Ethel brought him a cup of tea
while he was trying to write a poem
his criticism
of the ageing process
that it improves neither
looks nor intelligence
I told him how lucky he was
still to be in print after all these years
given the handicap
of never having existed
but he’s down as well
on those two blokes who misrepresented him
how they ducked for cover
and left him exposed
all his mates
in the heteronym business
speak only Portuguese
and smell of sardines
popping snakes on the dry camber
sipping an all-day-sucker in a sleeve
the truckies
waved out to us
Gallery
1
Australia’s McCahon
               Fred Williams
in his Waterfall Polyptych
narrows the white strand
               of sliding water
to a strip of light
that divides and redivides
               on one panel
curls on itself on another
space not just visual
               but physical too
hence the preposition
stacked like the
               stack of the land
already sacred
before human shadow
               weightless as paint
nothing to add
nothing to take away
               only look for yourself
(ambiguous imperative)
2
Jeffrey Smart
               on the other hand
                              painted the one
continuous concrete city
               Sydney to Turin
                              Santiago to Tokyo
the labyrinthine
               human-constructed
                              no man’s land
so the edge of each
               of his works leads
                              to the edge of
the next and the next
               seemingly functional
                              disabling geometries
with a palette
               more restricted
                              than the desert’s
cruel poetry
               of the underpass
                              the silo park
where grass occurs
               it is dry and fibrous
                              tormented by density
the age’s nightmare
               in which the solitary figure
                              stands aghast
3
Brack’s thin humans
in their streets and rooms
whose hats are more
expressive than their faces
are also more authentically
the dry-as-a-bone inheritors
of settlement
than any of Drysdale’s
stockmen or their wives (or bones)
glaring indomitably
into the red dust
of the empty centre
where terms like sturdy
and doughty run a distant
second and third to
just plain bloody determined
as if they could
see a future in it
Translit
I’m always pleased
to read in a book
a female character
who resembles me
for example the
fissile Kōko
in Yūko Tsushima’s
Child of Fortune
whose pregnancy
conceived in the mind
abetted by the
empty body
carries deeper weight
than gender
or culture may
safely redistribute
who we are
and where is such
a construct
beyond the self
dogged and swollen
all unsatisfactory day
among pupils
and relatives
each seeing
somebody other
than the undecided
one in the mirror
whose narrative
brief but inevitable
this recounting
actually is
Tony Beyer operates out of Taranaki, NZ.
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Through the Mallee with Ern
he whinged and grizzled
the whole way
window up too hot
window down too dusty
his lungs and the garage door
scraping
every time Ethel brought him a cup of tea
while he was trying to write a poem
his criticism
of the ageing process
that it improves neither
looks nor intelligence
I told him how lucky he was
still to be in print after all these years
given the handicap
of never having existed
but he’s down as well
on those two blokes who misrepresented him
how they ducked for cover
and left him exposed
all his mates
in the heteronym business
speak only Portuguese
and smell of sardines
popping snakes on the dry camber
sipping an all-day-sucker in a sleeve
the truckies
waved out to us
Gallery
1
Australia’s McCahon
               Fred Williams
in his Waterfall Polyptych
narrows the white strand
               of sliding water
to a strip of light
that divides and redivides
               on one panel
curls on itself on another
space not just visual
               but physical too
hence the preposition
stacked like the
               stack of the land
already sacred
before human shadow
               weightless as paint
nothing to add
nothing to take away
               only look for yourself
(ambiguous imperative)
2
Jeffrey Smart
               on the other hand
                              painted the one
continuous concrete city
               Sydney to Turin
                              Santiago to Tokyo
the labyrinthine
               human-constructed
                              no man’s land
so the edge of each
               of his works leads
                              to the edge of
the next and the next
               seemingly functional
                              disabling geometries
with a palette
               more restricted
                              than the desert’s
cruel poetry
               of the underpass
                              the silo park
where grass occurs
               it is dry and fibrous
                              tormented by density
the age’s nightmare
               in which the solitary figure
                              stands aghast
3
Brack’s thin humans
in their streets and rooms
whose hats are more
expressive than their faces
are also more authentically
the dry-as-a-bone inheritors
of settlement
than any of Drysdale’s
stockmen or their wives (or bones)
glaring indomitably
into the red dust
of the empty centre
where terms like sturdy
and doughty run a distant
second and third to
just plain bloody determined
as if they could
see a future in it
Translit
I’m always pleased
to read in a book
a female character
who resembles me
for example the
fissile Kōko
in Yūko Tsushima’s
Child of Fortune
whose pregnancy
conceived in the mind
abetted by the
empty body
carries deeper weight
than gender
or culture may
safely redistribute
who we are
and where is such
a construct
beyond the self
dogged and swollen
all unsatisfactory day
among pupils
and relatives
each seeing
somebody other
than the undecided
one in the mirror
whose narrative
brief but inevitable
this recounting
actually is
Tony Beyer operates out of Taranaki, NZ.