Joanne Burns Poems

from our deep cool verandah we spy on the world passing by. we both wear glasses in order to pick out the details. even as children we noticed all.
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in order to upgrade the community's appreciation of poetry during the international year of cultural enrichment stage 2, members of the state's library progress committee decided to establish a small library of t-shirts on which would be printed quality verse in vivid, bold colours and lettering.
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there were so many books. she had to separate them to avoid being overwhelmed by the excessive implications of their words. she kept hundreds in a series of boxes inside a wire cage in a warehouse. and hundreds more on the shelves of her various rooms.
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war is a noun and so is peace. uranium is a noun like armchair. plutonium and
perspiration are both nouns and each has four syllables. bliss and terror are also
nouns.
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his body a paradigm
of tattoo husbandry he
glowers on the street dreaming
himself to be an award
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she had more friends
than you could fit
into the back of a truck
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dressed down in designer
loin cloth nipples perked up
alert to the beep of her
mobile phone her johnny
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if you can stand at the right angle on the front steps of santiago central library on a hot and sunny day when you are protesting against state torture;
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it's hard to give up the biscuits
so tightly sealed in their shiny
white packets, the cryptic
glyphs of saos and jatz: cunieform
of the antipodes; can you hear
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the voice of the qawwali singer
lifts off your wig of poor listening
habits you meet with a stack
of ice cubes in an exploding
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