Poems
colour wheel
i.m. Mervyn Barnes
the American-
barn-red off-centre
timber
shed
trumpeting
through blood &
bone the glasshouse’s
yellow stars
the front yard’s statue-
sque rooster
screaming blue
murder till blue
in the face
Bay of Fires’
orange lichen,
zinc-creamed lips
a pine plantation’s
green rose-
llas that Tasmanian
Tiger snake’s
purple
jaw
slurping at the
truck’s driver window
quick wound
the moon
poring
whitely over the almanac
Bursaria spinosa
from Cyclone Songs
You hold it like a lit bulb,
a pound of light
—Jacob Polley, ‘A Jar of Honey’
though technically it’s less than a pound,
this Prickly Box, this jar of Unheated
Honey, gift from a haver hunting for
tinned tuna, thing to lighten your morning
cups of tea, to ball with tablespoons
under a swarming cluster, a waxing moon,
the only lit bulb in this city
where cops patrol broods of electricity
where you drone the common names: Australian
Boxthorn, Boxwood, Castanet Bush, Christmas
Bush, Geapga, Kurwan, Mock Orange, Native
Blackthorn, Native Box, Native Olive, Prick-
ly Pine, Spiny Box, Sweet Bursaria,
Thorn Box, Whitethorn, You’re-Sick-To-Death-Of-Stars