By Michael Farrell

224 Spring 2016

I drive the boat to the shack and do nothing

like knitting a Hole in the buffet table

and other Tasks that need mismanaging

I wake up five hours later for a tootle

to find Icecream in the fishtank and the phone ringing

it’s a Mobile but i prefer not to be too intimate

with Objects that last less than a teatowel

there might be an Earthquake says an automated

Voice. later the clock will fall into the stew

and die There: see what i mean? friends

are driving up on Saturday in their stillwagon

which is what I call a ute with dogs in the back

I’m a quite successful tv

Writer. ivy has encroached the patio

in the Water i like to think i’m a river sponge

or a security Gate from a submerged city

That would once have never let anything without

Feet through. when my friends arrive

I’ll want to read, but for now the books

are piled on the Sand, in a little borderland

between Eel and snake country. by the fire

I try to invent postcolonial

Chess, but the fire’s no help, for all the grapes

and olive Pits i throw it. i nearly

caught a Bat in my teeth earlier

not for trying. I let the sound of

the Crickets in, and with some rubberbands

and Bamboo, i make a chocolate

Frog racetrack. the slowest

I encourage by biting bits off

to make Them lighter, or tape cocktail

australian Flags to their backs, to give them flight

and Pride. when i wake with my head on the finish

Line, i have a vision of cockroaches marching

towards my open Mouth. i bare my teeth

hoping to seem an unwelcome peg Bucket