In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jen Crawford reads extracts from 'abandoned house music' which features in the 2016 ACT anthology.

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Extracts from 'abandoned house music'

messenger

I mother a scorching fence
I mother a child against a fence

and the cry

here come the shellshocked to arm the day
here come collectors for the shells

amber cry

nest-thief

seed-eye

sown
for others to reap

planet of weeds

wild berries underfoot, drunken forests bend
down into the shape of their children,
tallish gardens. necklace spines fallow brown
settle down into pale lawns, child lawns'
curled shoulders, speeding
the forgetting of a forest.
air looks to being now and then
carries sight around the draped hair casting out
for sun-fish, which cool quickly
in the deep given away.

dry lichen fields the shift
between the seen unfelt and the felt unseen.
a slip-moon cut opens wood, soft
for the flood and the drought, fear,
hyphae, a line of taxis gathers
spirit at the gate, that there is
somewhere else to go, go on
now to the mesopause, new world holding
dream dots out in pressureless trade

dots out

does a beast stir near me I am alone
I am awake. my love has gone
into the dark the house open the wind

gone to the garden to look for the lilies
gone to count the buds

in the savour of young fruit
bitten on the trees

print of our house upon my cheek.

the spheres of our house
rise, flagstones
float upon the dirt

the gate's fallen open,
the garden is open,

the servants of the gate
and the guards
of the road bruise my breast:

he has gone to the fields
that turn to brine

he has gone to the fields
on horizons of milk

gone to catch the seeds
that float away

hyphae

lichen loves stone
a ship loves thin air
water loves a crevice
a crevice cedes dry
cedes damp
stone walks into softness

the guards leave for the coast
leave for the mall
for the supercolony
spinning itself out

around green-crossed
chorion
multiform darkness
amnios and body-stalk
yolk and cry

koel

promise

I love you you come back,
hatches undog, ants
stream the rope out
of loose husks in the hold

it must be you, come back
as ants, as honeydew uneaten by ants
dripping onto the trees,
sooty mould swarming
over the stems and leaves. exhausted,
seasonless, vigorous

cascade,
adorn me to meet you
as formic acid, as shells bleached
out in an ungroomed place,
the springing up of a stinging tree
as swelling belly,
ruin, the lack
of a canopy gap

Jen Crawford

'abandoned house music' previously published in lichen loves stone (Tinfish Press, 2015)

Extracts from 'abandoned houes music' appear in States of Poetry - ACT. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Jen Crawford's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT'