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- Published 20240806
- ISBN: 978-1-922212-98-6
- Extent: 216pp
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Che Guevara is white and wearing a shirt
with his face on it, mansplaining Derrida or Adorno
a hat like your grandfather used to wear though at least
the man knew something about the great war [2]. This Che
hasn’t worked out how to borrow a book from the Baillieu yet
& his diary suggests a paranoid persona not a propensity
toward engines – see, he is trying to build something here
the exact proportions of which were lost with Da Vinci
or was it Dan Brown? Your dog, likewise, is a sommelier
of poop. Can snack twice on an idea of self but never
quite muster a technology. The part of the rewriting
in present tense hasn’t become present yet. Present
to self: presence. The sort of gift that keeps giving
you anxiety. Untangle a tongue, but still the memory
of knots. You are me are him, in a sense of difference
though there is nothing deferential about this. We both
hate him, hate you. Just join the environmental society
& hoon a cherry vape with someone just as old & stupid
as you will be. Imagine: dealing with humanity every day.
Imagine: people turn to you, gasp. Imagine: mansplaining
but this time end up with an abanico, a PowerPoint &
a briefcase. Imagine: the classroom gets that much
smaller and becomes an office.
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The pool
Mum always says to me, you know what he’s like – your father. As if the old man is my responsibility and mine alone. Little wonder that legacy and liable have the same number of syllables. Of course I know what he’s like…so much so that I’m not even remotely surprised when one afternoon I hop off the school bus and come wandering inside with my little brother Jeremy in tow to find a big bald bloke sitting cross-legged at the dining table blabbering on about fibre glass this, solar heating that. On the table in front of Dad, a corona of shiny brochures.
‘We’re getting a pool, sons!’ Dad winks at Jeremy.
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