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Criticism

Brian Henry on Kinsella
Gabriel Welsch on Northrop
Gabriel Welsch on Smith
Cecily Iddings on Ruefle
Christopher McDermott on Wenderoth

James Stuart is a Sydney-based poet. He was recipient of the Young Adult Australian Poetry Fellowship in 2002. “The gods of fornication” is from the series The Homeless Gods.

Camouflage

                we know how to become

                number one

                in the hot body show

                                            - Salt n Pepa

At the Kinselas nightclub dawn cracks

its first joke. Kylie Minogue sings

Step back in time then thanks

the songwriters for their work.

Outside the bathroom a sleeveless boy

in army slacks wins “The campest voice of the night.”

You know what’s sad, he pronounces.

Bali, that’s what.

A couple of hundred bodies decorate

the dance-floor above him

with 4/4 movement and a fine powder

of which the scent eludes me amidst the lemonade.

A woman, strapped to the chest with an explosive

leather number, runs a palm over the stubble of her boy’s

shaved head; he slides up her skirt

igniting the night-life. The televisions

replay the aftermath: the burning bombed

shanty-club district; a weeping boy in a terry-towelling hat

wheeling away from a circle of arms. The commentary

’s out of touch, out of sound.

A Maori stumbles into a girl at the bar and repeats

the national ceremony. Pin this sprig of wattle to your lapel

as a tribute to the dead. I’m sorry you’ve spilt your drink.

We’re all in this together.

In amongst the crisp, pounding sound, Warwick, who’s just

been faux-break-dancing as a tribute to pastiche

and abandon, sits down with me to argue installation art

; and abandon. We attempt to represent

limbo; there and then; a Destiny’s Child track

cuts in with its own my own diamonds

own my own rings; Jen, the birthday girl,

grabs my hand and escorts

me out into the remix; another leather-

strapped girl, and co.,

rotates through the entrance atrium,

sparks straight for the Leopard Skin Lounge;

Adam returns to our table

with a round of vodka-and-cranberries

so tasty we propose a toast

to being above it all.

The gods of fornication

The Southern right whales caress the currents

between here and the cold waters, flowing

with the temperature. They cavort in the wider

ocean, effecting barrel rolls in song.

Surfers emulate such actions with wild

whoops at the sharp end of the swell.

The theologians understand that these gods

travel with sex at the crest of their cerebrum.

Their thousand mile orgasm endures

for months, and is rarely filmed or heard.

Occasionally, the whales dock in the harbour

to fuck, and humans congregate and watch.