Poems by Corey Wakeling

 The Body of Bodies of the Body Bodies

The sky is what we apologize for as the ecumenical
and you reply “hydroponics are possible anyplace,”
those who read Transnistria closely do not necessarily ferry
from polity to métier,
something up and wanting,
harboring the cat burglar in their closet, an actor
making Tennyson of the cloaked darkness, marching. So then,
agreed, say it is the sky from which the bullet flies, Acéphale.
 
My thoughts were to hang the contorted scowl of Poe’s
portrait above the landing and investigate
the salt of his earth, the plaster.
               The white desert is purest furthest, flung-set, like
the roll of the dice or feline plummet. To think they shortened
the lemon tree so that it’d stop producing citrus.
               One man’s steamboat is another man’s King James Bible,
the Song of Songs of Song of Songs of Song of Songs
of Song of Songs of Song of Songs of Solomon
torn out.
What morass exhausts you,
hides you from the third procurement,
turning back the hair and letting the sweat dribble, as if it came
from the anxious vein throbbing like a world of sighs or
peristalsis.
You-know-what in the gape of the orange
of the birds of paradise, purged but for purgatorial
High Wycombe secured in reticulation. To finish
with a conjunction would be worth the pelting of the lead brigade
by members of economist corner, by the economist of the economists
of economist corner, for the economist of the economists of economist corner,
had they the squinty eye of all genius, the woman in daffodils
with a half glass of lager, puckering her lips like a rosebud at her
husband, turned to the tree lopper in overalls shammed by
the sawdust of spruce.
The sky is thus what we apologize for and why we
fondle alone in night hours, backs to the ceiling. If not that
then at least mock drowning staged of the wreck
of the HMS Orange.
Look into the orifice of Da Vinci,
the riddle is a skull not another body, nor another body
of bodies of the body bodies, nor by the body of bodies
of the body bodies, nor for the body of bodies of
the body bodies.
The curled back the bald hull of the Orange,
the desert a swelling surface of sawdust of spruce,
the reflection of sky in night hours the songs
of the mock drowning.

 
No Head for Old Boardwalks

Question time in broad country, this
is no head for old boardwalks considering
the hinterland cottage and the fifteen
ancestors and someone’s designs to be
emissary. One lobe then of a bicameral
bush trail that eventuates in the desert,
like the sweating pub in Toodyay,
or the bush mouth at Kalamunda’s peak.
No head to stirrup or give the bit, rummaging
through heirloom trunks for unfilled postcards,
though tarnished brooches with profiles of
those other than the faces of ancestors were
uncovered, not to be unexpected,
of brass, lead and pewter.
Abandoned by her caravan, a young woman
is visited by Venus of Willendorf though a library
does not clutch her collar but a coloured knit
scarf, the floating Venus no longer a projection
from an archive of defunction.
Nudity is the embarrassment of both loners,
the woman invites where the Venus departs,
the woman mouths soundlessly where the Venus
stirs sounds of underbrush by the footsteps
of her ephemeral museum.
They say the capital has stolen her now,
the woman thinks it is her lips mouthing the captions
of lit artefacts and the Rosetta stone floor
of the empty form of a glorious fleet.
Moldavite feet, she now reads the horses aside
the delivery vans with the speed of the tongue,
their pseudo tetanus shots and fleeced
physiotherapists, the hardness of hooves and
the sobriquets that deliver them healthy,
like black caviar or monkey’s pride. A good enough
talisman if you’re haunted by the artefact and
you wish to plunge into the sedge and seek the
coastline of Albany or the eyes that are the sweating
lights of the museum, having to abjure and omit
the facility of the beachcomber Parisian.
Such feet do not deliver you like the fleet rather
crack you like a hardboiled egg, the
question is does she plunge or does she investigate?
Jarrah floorboards fitted poorly let light and
dust through, she smells the thinking of the curator’s
eyes from beneath him. When it is that the brooch
of the decapitated profile, the gleam of the Moldavite
foot, or the oolite figure are sought by her, the questions
of the attic start their chain dragging and horse reading.
To quote her eisegesis on Melbourne’s khaki jacket,
“if I went back to my parent’s street, I would find
myself beginning the Bibbulmun track again.”
 
 

Success
 
There are some bloodhounds lost to the east of the olive grove
and the eldest white gums, where the earth is marshy
and all the blue granite turns green by moss. There are those
who aren’t afraid of the canines of the poem. “Don’t suck
a lemon — Success.”[1] And the wombat comes out of its hole
with its hands up. And the fox comes out of its hole with
its hands up. And the rabbit comes out of its hole with its
hands up. And the bilby comes out of its hole with its hands up.
And the brown snake comes out of its hole with its hands up.
And the platypus comes out of its hole with its hands up. And
the wolf spider comes out of its hole with its hands up. And
the opossum comes out of its hole with its hands up. And
the fruit bat comes out of its hole with its hands up. And the
Bombala comes out of its hole with its hands up.
The bloodhounds responsible are the poem.
The canines of the bloodhound are soft from the work of Success.
    The milieu is something like the hole coming out of itself, like a stony
      nail strip employed by the police to stop done up Valiants and tinted Fairlanes.
          By turning the grit of the subterranean are we to close Brunswick Road
            for our dolly of the wolf spider pageant, for the dolly of the rabbit pageant,
                for the dolly of the wombat pageant, for the dolly of the brown snake pageant,
for the dolly of the fruit bat pageant, for the dolly of the Bombala pageant, videlicet the
pageant of the hole coming out of itself with its hands up for the poem
          where the earth is marshy and shaded by the eldest white gums
              and granite glows green with new moss. Éclat for those unafraid of the
                    canines of the poem.

1. Quote by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in concert.

Shriek
 
To leave a shriek keyboard and
not a corpse, cadaver permitting.
For the anatomy show
or apprenticeship in synthesizers,
shrieks in browns and reds
apprising the only poet of
how death neared the first
trespasser drenched wet
but never frozen to the nostrils,
like the expedition for nothing.
Full of notes in flagellation country,
might read the breast reversed,
flesh fallen off like a cloister.