CHRIS BROWN

away from home

bowties or butterflies:
the sauce of your choice.

an umbrella collapses.
the chairs are inseparable.

-

this display a glass
bottomed gondola.

model train derailment
halfway into the mountain

-

like restless in ‘the
method of immersion’

la lingua madre
surfacing for breath.

-

bus stops pine needles carpet
the terra rossa tennis court.

imminent arrivals
text-to-destination.

-

grammatically the tutor tells me
you cannot enter the walls –

stick figure stuck
in a stone cell to illustrate.

-

poems of place.
souvenir this that

his own little
piece of vesuvius.

-

up/down some
(unsigned?) street in pistoia

reception deserts us returns.
digging deep for lost vocab.

-

but cinema centrale
settles it:

visiting mono-linguists
wilt in the provinces

-

uncorrupted/
unembalmed

not much now
to hang the gown on

-

most frequently
asked question?

what to feed the children
death or fairytales.

-

makes two of us out of a tower’s
skinny staircase

the renaissance
spills into the backyard.

-

radio guide
re-tells the tale

of the twins
history and hearsay

-

somewhere more specific
than piazza napoleone?

…hotel universo.
see you at two.

-

this winter air frigid
as a pen chained to the bank desk

handwriting flatlining
in fingerless gloves

-

still scrawls my “xmas
high-rise haiku”:

inflatable santas
hung from the balconies/with care.-

(bit rich?) as benedict declares
the way we worship

obscene wealth
a modern sin.
-

finest rain
stencils awnings in the square

lavoro in corso
loose cobblestone vaguely cubist

-

thank you gesture
the eyes of the mime.

could’ve/should’ve
squeezed the accordion in.

-

almost a memory
that pillion rider’s

shirt-tail billow
ing into the past.

-

in your dreams!
a skybed absorbs local turbulence.

flying nervously in circles
above sydney suspense (viewed literally)

Chris Brown lives in Newcastle, Australia. His poetry has appeared in a number of online and print journals including, most recently, cordite, overland and The Age. He has work forthcoming with mascara poetry and foam:e.