Michael Small: Selected Poems

crustating in class      vassal or vessel    dripfed by vultures war vets in gowns       boxed by backrest & knobbled desklid          iron stanchions stirruping lustings of legs             often id pore over that oaken scrawled slab                in veins of stephens blue black & ruby red                   Jackson Pollock   rorshached   bridget riley                      so pricked by the press of worsted weave                     ...

                                         for Tess         I never wanted her inside          self-centred animals, cats         always scratching the furniture         infesting the pile with fleas         never did like the smell of cat in a house         besides   there was a bolt-hole in the garage wall         & a roll of old carpet      she’d be right         One summer evening it chucked hailstones thick as lychees       ...

‘Get over ‘em, Blue!   Garn, get over ‘em!’ hanging by a thread in the forcing-pen    one year’s income        on the swoop    the manager tosses his border collie          to ride the waves of nervy knotty-woolled backs which get up his nose, this brainless baaing mob of bleaters daggy followers with their skit-skit-skittering on stage    gang of six shearers    in blue singlets               - Greg leaning over a dangled back-brace -       shuffling to slick steady rhythm and whooshing hum         hogs       arthritic grannies as laid-back partners   some gun shearer dude backs in through saloon-type    doors     dragging another hogget by front legs then cranks one foreleg ...

          Allan Banjo Border was Australia’s cricket captain       who rewrote the record books       AB © was a testy bugger (156 outings, 265 innings)       with stubby chin & baggy green eyes       A leftie,       he took a swag of wickets       & scored a tuckerbag of runs       Saw active service in the Caribbean       & led the campaign to South Africa in which Cronje surrendered       Survived the dark days of the ’86 drought v. the Kiwis       A balladeer with the bat       AB penned Happy Dispatches about droving to distant boundaries       & fielding behind the sliprail in Clancy of the Overthrow...