Poems by Adrian Wiggins

Riddle

I’m shallow, large & proximal
to the city center & my modernism
begins with the 50s!
house & ends with questions
of craft in the age of digital.
This poem
is not about feeling, at least,
I don’t think it is,
when it’s the last thousand
tonnes you make
your money on — that
& the co-opting effect
of conversational tone.

Retrospective
 
Sitting pretty as a merger
of power & wealth, I start out
with Miffy & finish up
with a milk price war.
What dies?
Stat! As in
“Immediately” (from
the L: statim)
Remember,
our parents kissed & danced
swing on the sprung floor
of Cloudland & that’s my favourite
part of the whole,
sorry tale.  When all that winless
year we looked & looked
for a million-dollar
grosser.  Then car parks
were built on top burying
it etcetera …

Three prayers
 
I started a Japanese
death poem in blood on
the rear window, or maybe
in connected script
on her nine-year-old’s Etch A Sketch
(& you know the black line shows
only the inner darkness of the toy
— see picture)
or was it just in the ear
of an ambo … well, uh, now
I’m not so sure.
 *
A somewhat plastic mental state
straightened right out with cantorial
prayer.
           Maybe it was his
mental state, I mean,
while the rest of us were stuck
in a first-person shooter toggling
god-mode on & off he sd “Is the answer
thanotourism?”
 *
In the end I’m the only one changed
by my novel — so thanks for having me
on the panel.
           Thanks.
                         You’re the best
use of my balance sheet.