The Best Australian Poems 2011 by John Tranter Page A

double-hander flag routine
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â & other choreographed delights
    Â 
    radio waves stirring the pond
    where ducks collect surface dross
    switching easily between
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â air & gelatinous water
    Â 
    with an eye to the cinematic
    a swan lands gracelessly
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â spraying mud, bits of weed
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â but making me think of a version of Zeus
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â as rendered by Rubens
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (all white feathers pressed
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â indecently on creamy thighs)
    Â 
    poor Leda not yet
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â hip to the ruse

Reconfigured
Paul O’Loughlin
    So when I went out of the bathroom I knew that no one was there.
    So I went out naked, dripping wet, it didn’t matter.
    So I was surprised when I was decapitated by the ceiling fan.
    So I was upset when I was castrated by the bread knife.
    So it was very hard to understand when I was disembowelled by the corkscrew.
    When the television curled up inside my vacant abdomen,
    it was not only extremely uncomfortable but it was also incredibly hard to watch the six o’clock news.
    Only then did I realise my error in purchasing at a heavily discounted price the wide screen TV that was all the fashion.
    Â 
    The linoleum spinning, coiled round my feet, I tripped and fell.
    Retarded, I threshed on the floor raising weeks of unswept dust
    curling up in hurricanes, gouging emptiness into the walls.
    Disturbed cockroaches fled in plagues to the safety of my only safe earlobe
    with a flower pot hanging metallically by an ear-ringed mutilation.
    The abdominal TV was vomited in my terror through a torn oesophagus
    while its news presenter sprayed litres of insect spray on the forty-thousand cockroaches nestling cosy by my eardrum.
    Only then did I notice that I could not notice what I noticed because the notice was pinned far away in the kitchen on the fridge.
    Â 
    The kitchen, my enemy, scalded me with its water, burnt me with its stove
    and soaked me in the chatter and clatter of frying pans and saucepans.
    Sugar stirred cunningly in every sweet delight in the pantry
    in an unflattering eagerness to rush me into a diabetic extreme.
    The power of the fatty food and the lure of the lounge
    sent me spiralling into inaction, baldness and middle age,
    severed from my reality by an unkind addiction to a comfortable life in a suburban brick and tile lawn-mowed masquerade,
    in a piteously unwanted prosthetic of a globally embedded city, flamboyant in fashion’s leading skirts.
    Â 
    And the notice, it went coldly, refrigerated as it were in temperatures Antarctic.
    It told me its ol’ story, flapping beneath a dreary plastic butterfly magnet:
    buy some milk, put the cat out, duck when the ceiling fan spins,
    sweep the floor, spray the cockroaches, mow the lawn,
    avoid the knives and the corkscrew and don’t turn on the TV.
    I replaced my head and my balls, and other bits and pieces wherever they fitted best.
    I coerced the TV back to its allotted place, and pontificated to all household items to be reconfigured to suit the decor.
    So I went back into the bathroom naked, dripping wet, it didn’t matter, I knew that no one was there.

I love
Ouyang Yu
    I love work even on weekends particularly on weekends
    I love work on holidays
    I love work after making love after eating a good meal after drinking a good drink
    I love work trying to let other things rake my brains
    I love work even when I am with people who talk rubbish
    I love work even in sleep even when I am in a dream even