ipso facto Poem by Joanne Burns

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
the fall of the auctioneer's hammer
the national museum has made
a bid - we sit and contemplate
the soaring price of mothballs while
silverfish rehearse on the
velvet lounge, hear the leaves
scrape on the spidery windows jealous
ancestors plaque sandstone
walls, please treat the diaries to
ten coats of estapol and make
sure the magistrates plait the lawn

saos and jatz - popular Australian biscuits of the kind you have with cheese;

estapol - polyurethane paint, lacquer