ISSUE 23

MARCH 2011

COTTONMOUTH I S S U E 23 M A R C H 2 0 1 1 editor layout SCOTTPATRICK MITCHELL AMBER FRESH

C O T T O N M O U T H is a monthly performance night which is produced in conjunction with a podcast and publication. please direct all submissions or requests to info@cottonmouth.org.au and be sure to check regular updates online by visiting www.cottonmouth.org.au (.) 2011 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing by the publishers. Any work sent to Cottonmouth is considered to be an agreement of use within Cottonmouth publications. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, publisher or Cottonmouth Committee.

CONTENTS Tim Wright 6UVSFM DRIVING  Graham Nunn REQUIEM  Marisa Allen STRANGE CREATURES  Rachael Mead THE STORM Cherish Marrington UNTITLED 2  Corey Wakeling VIEW FROM THE DIRECTOR  Joseph Powers Bowman CASTLE IN FOREST  Jill Jones UNTITLED  Liam Ferney GO MORDECAI Andrei Buters  WHY NOT VISIT SERPENTINE  Marisa Allen THE BEST CAR BUMPER STICKER I EVER SAW Nicole Norelli  TERRAMOTO  Benjamin Hart  A BORROWED FAITH Joseph Powers Bowman  LARGE BUILDING WITH TREES Liam Ferney  RYANAIR FROM ROME  Graham Nunn  WHAT THE HERON KNOWS Cherish Marrington  UNTITLED 1  Faustina Delaney  3:59AM  4 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Narelle Goulden  CHILDS PLAY

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Clayton Lin  JAMES DEANS COAT

CONTRIBUTORS 

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6UVSFM DRIVING
back from Perth Airport in a Tarago in 1998 Agoraphobic Nosebleed (on the radio) Isuzu in front

Tim Wright

the letters V

and

Japanese comics shellacked to a suitcase white Peter Stuyvesants speed in a wallet

at the iridologist

after 3:05pm Before the internet...

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Before the opshops close

the long grass is growing

thick and fast

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REQUIEM Graham Nunn

The National Museum of dreams is closed on Mondays. Ad Infinitum. In the petting zoo, a lamb rehearses Bachs requiem. You cant sleep. You imagine youre a butcher; your mother awakens on the table & in front of all the other men grabs your cleaver & wags it at you shouting, dont you dare mention my appendectomy. Your written exam asked Heart? & you answered B, the empty chamber of a gun. Even the shooting range is closed on Mondays. Rehearse in your glass house, a requiem for the final dream beneath your ribs that catatonic feeling. You are adding an appendix to the list of Mondays closures: the melodies of caged animals, it begins, jars of morning air, the instrumental ache of hunger.

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STRANGE CREATURES Marisa Allen

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THE STORM Rachael Mead

clouds held afternoon sun under all day isobars tumbling together drew the sinew from our limbs the first wave blew us into bed the wind, lost in the steep maze of valleys, panicked thrashing around the house as if caught in a net forcing its fingers under the gutters, trying to peer in as if we held the secret to escape gum nuts hailed tin in staccato snare drum counterpoint to woodwind howl all night we waited for the birds to peal the all clear at dawn we emerged to a shuffled world the blue spruce parasol missing a rib and the road under the stringybarks now soft forest path strewn with wild prunings of the storm gardener

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UNTITLED 2 Cherish Marrington

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VIEW FROM THE DIRECTOR Corey Wakeling

There are plans for a director. She will be an old blossoming tree with bluebells in her trunk. A statuary. A chandelier. Within her cavities a hundred-thousand infant possums will abide. Does this have anything to do with that blue lagoon at her feet? Further, has it been all her doing? As director, she will first declare a boardroom table, then a township under its guidance. Im not sure we can predict her curatorial style. I am not sure of a chandelier at all. In Clepsydra, the helicopter is silent like a suburban rat, asking the best questions from above. In The Anaglyph, the questions are drafted in a cinema, the show is of course something asinine in 3-D, but all of its adult jokes are collected studiously by this draughtsman. Yes, these very notes, anticipated by her and her team, are mostly illustrations. Of modern life? Hardly. Hardening. Closer to woodblock printing, and yet this open diary is really just self-explanatory: the apartment above a convenience store, the cold of a mining town, a misplaced New York sensibility, squares on a monumental grid. Our director agrees modern life is illustrating in a drawing-as-catharsis workshop, the helicopter is landing at the hospital as is its daily wont and the draughtsman, however colour-blind, saw enough and heard enough to engage the architect in soliloquy. Before answering the lagoon question since as it stands the possums repose in its revitalising waters an appurtenance must be better
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interrogated. We can leave the individual initiatives up to the contingencies of this new town (that is, let them spar with their creators as they wish, these young sports), or we can fence the chandelier off in its historical vestibule, make a protective corner within this old arts facility. What sphere would adjudge the actual time of the blossoms fall? Does it matter? I think it matters. It matters to her, the director of this conference. Only time will expose whether we should still be sitting beneath her, whether her blossoms are alive or dead, whether the edifices surrounding her are homes or viewing platforms. Bluebells from a trees thicket. Or, are they like the possums, growing in the hollows of her bough, of her belly? So much is impossible. Nevertheless, we are given the call to approach her, to do our work. She doesnt tell us, but there is no where but the lagoon to rest, and so we drop in. What kind of curatorship is this?

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CASTLE IN FOREST Joseph Powers Bowman

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UNTITLED Jill Jones

A SECOND IS only a sample of how a roof becomes rain. Ive been careless with corsets. When the sex machines on the blink turn up yr radio, is it the sound of silver pumping? Theres too much ash and not enough syntax to make me watch with my baby tonight. If prime ministers could shelve their selves we could all be walking to boot. A mosquito yaps into the shimmering yard, if the darks dark thats perception for you, boom tish but wait, its the milky way staggering up there. Ladies and gentlemen, heres to the aliens yes to all those yeses. The rose isnt as ancient as its seed but it opens, dung is juice and the zipper is broken. But you cant recall your species anymore they wont listen. Succumbing isnt an answer nor is it a question and you could be right or frustrated by imagination. Lets fall without sleeping this once.
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GO MORDECAI Liam Ferney

Like Murillo fallen from a ladder, I have tumbled from my dream.

Pierced as surely as Sebastian, eyes weary as 3AM 7/11.

Then after the catastrophe, dawn, a waiter

at a restaurant you can't afford, brings its cheque.

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WHY NOT VISIT SERPENTINE Andrei Buters

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THE BEST CAR BUMPER STICKER I EVER SAW Marisa Allen

emptiness fills the emptiness i like to run my eyes over surfaces i count the surfaces with my eyes At Hanger, i fall asleep i fall asleep at parties too some places just deserve a portal

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TERRAMOTO Nicole Norelli

Current mood: forgotten everything is distances next to you. dissolving, earth-ridden, dense and holy. triassic. anima. intuit. matter. matter of fact dirt moves a desire quakes matters of the heart concerning.

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A BORROWED FAITH Benjamin Hart

If you want to get by you have to learn the rules. You can borrow this but I want it back, she said and passed a tattered book, its symbol marked with crossing lines. With open hands I smiled broad and kissed her gloss enamel lips.

I burnt the book inside her church and made a pact with god aloft to always break the fucking rules.

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LARGE BUILDING WITH TREES Joseph Powers Bowman

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RYANAIR FROM ROME Liam Ferney

you promised to read dante with four eyes. could it really be jbt?

the colours fade but the spillage of a holiday reminds me: a poster for fronte del porto postcards from tuscany gum for the plane. there were mornings after nights that i smoked far too many cigarettes watched a hot air balloon rise over surrey. that freshly peeled kaleidoscopic mandarin, its basket bright with dragon breath above a frost covered field. still a child like the high schooler at graduation, it segued over the horizon in search of strawberries and champagne. mud on my cuffs when i wonder could we really have been contenders?

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WHAT THE HERON KNOWS Graham Nunn

is it takes effort to stand still, silence is an elegy for the dying light and each breath is a prayer for those who move along the stuttering whiteness of flood-lit asphalt, away from the savannahs of our origin, those smooth, descending pastures to the sea.

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UNTITLED 1 Cherish Marrington

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3:59AM Faustina Delaney

And here are all your dreams, packed like innocent bystanders before a train crash.

Packed in cardboard boxes that once contained fruit from interstate and overseas. Stolen from the markets an hour before tomorrow. Scavenged from supermarkets. Retrieved from last years move. You find yourself sleepless in this now not home.

How strange to see life packed, as though it could be packed.

And in the morning all this will be cleaned up. The walls sugar-washed. The floors swept up. The window closed. And locked. And all the things we said in this room or unsaid in this room will have gone. Washed. Sugar washed. Blanked but for the key left on the kitchen bench.

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CHILDS PLAY Narelle Goulden

My son was rescuing soldiers with his new helicopter equipped with stretcher and cables retractable.

Maybe its because theyre plastic and cheap; still I couldnt help noticing how quickly the soldiers became amputees.

Im sure the manufacturers produce them purely to ensure durability is short lived; just a ploy to guarantee well replace them once damaged or broken. Easily disposable once theyve outworn their use.

The cunning satirical bastards.

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JAMES DEANS COAT Clayton Lin

I borrowed James Deans coat and I never gave it back, and now I cant, because he came and went. So I hold onto it, a cushion, a tourniquet, a memento mori And its strangling me Im size XL, but this coat is size M, the buttons latch to me, pinching and scarring, contorting the body, abrasions and rashes break out on my skin so I tried handing it to the Salvos, the Vinnies and for once they both say nah. Its not winter sale time, the old women would reason. So I tried selling it on eBay a customer would scream how could he sell such a valuable thing?! And out of respect no one would take it. When it got dirty, I took it to the laundromat. The proprietor
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gazed at me evilly. Aaaahhh!!! I scream. To my horror when I pick it from the dryer, Im size XL, but this coat is S. Why did I borrow James Deans coat? It was just for one sweet night. He happily obliged, and like boys, we leaped, for a joy ride, in his souped-up racing speedster, with milk bottles in the air at 65 miles per hour, dashed headlong like boys into a crash course. To this day, James Deans coat still wears me. In the sun, Ill hunch and roast. In the rain, Ill curl and get damp. In the snow, Ill hypothermia in this bone crushing straitjacket.

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Itll follow me every footstep I take. In this funeral suit, making my last march to the planetarium of heaven vs. hell, wearing James Deans coat. It wears me well.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Tim Wright lives at the moment in Melbourne, where he is working on a thesis at Monash University. He is involved with the online journal When Pressed and has a blog at http://swimswam.wordpress.net. Graham Nunn is a founding member of Brisbanes longest running poetry event, SpeedPoets. He blogs fiercely at Another Lost Shark:www.anotherlostshark.comand has published five collections of poetry, his most recent,Ocean Hearted, published by Another Lost Shark Publications in July 2010. His debut CD, recorded in collaboration with Sheish Money,The Stillest Hourwas recently shortlisted for the Overload Poetry Festivals Aural Text Award Marisa Allen is poet, songwriter, vocalist and violinist and front woman for the band Bremen Town Musician. She has performed at the 2009 Queensland Poetry Festival performing from the chapbook Fire In the Head edited by David Ghostboy Stavanger. Her work has been published in Going Down Swinging, Cottonmouth, Speedpoets Zine, Outsiders Zine and various local street press. Rachael Mead was born in Perth and is currently undertaking a Ph.D in creative writing at the University of Adelaide. Last year she was published in Going Down Swinging, Poetrix and Verandah and was awarded the Dorothy Hewett Flagship Fellowship at Varuna. Cherish Marrington lives in Perth. Her deliciously dark zine The Funnyroom is out now. Corey Wakeling is a poet living in Melbourne. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Cordite, Overland, Willows Wept Review, Art Monthly, foam:e, Steamer, Etchings, the NZEPC, and the ABR, newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and anthologies Some Sonnets, Nth Degree, and The Reader. Joseph Bowman (1752-1779) was an officer in the American Revolutionary War who served in the Illinois campaign. Maj. Bowman participated in the 1778 capture of Fort de Chartres, and remained there for some time as the commander of the newly renamed Fort Bowman. While attending a victory celebration, Maj. Bowman was injured by

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an accidental gunpowder explosion and later succumbed to his injuries, becoming the only American officer to die in the Illinois campaign. He now lives and works in Los Angeles. Jill Jones has published six full-length poetry books, including Dark Bright Doors, published by Wakefield Press in 2010. She edited, with Michael Farrell, Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets, in 2009. She has been a film reviewer, journalist, book editor and arts administrator. She currently teaches at the University of Adelaide. Liam Ferney is a Brisbane poet. His second collectionCareerwill be published by Vagabond Press in 2011. Andrei Buters is a reporter by day and a secret comic artist at night. He has a giant graphic novel that he wrote all the words for and drew all the pictures in. But he never shows anyone. He grew up in Serpentine-Jarrahdale and he highly recommends the place. Nicole Norelli. Dabbler. Dribbler. Writer. Photographer. Editor. Teacher. Performer. Involved in all things arts and culture since 1998. Eclectic. Eccentric. Deeply affected and often shy out loud. Benjamin Hart is just a lower working class resident of Gosnells, Perth, WA who has devoted the greater part of his life, including five years of tertiary study, to the art and craft of writing. His veins are filled with ink and the pages on his desk are soaked in blood. Faustina Minna Delany was born in Osaka, Japan in the 80s, immigrated to Sydney on Irish passports where they gave her and her mum mini party pies and a eucalyptus tree. It perished a few months later. Now in Melbourne, writing and pasting pictures on walls. Published by Ondru http://www.ondru.org/voice/2011/02/foreign-birthsand-deaths-registry BlogSpot, y tu.

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Narelle Goulden is 27, a high school teacher of English and History, with a Masters of Creative Writing. She has a pet lizard called Liz. Clayton Lin is currently studying film and creative writing at Curtin University. He is unemployed and dirt poor, but can write on the fly, and is developing his modest talent. And a bit cynical and self-deprecating, but also animated and open-minded. Also has a barely-updated poetry site (but will try): http://spoken-breath.tumblr.com/

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Thanks to the Cottonmouth committee. They are Patrick Pittman, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Simon Cox, Amber Fresh, Toms Ford, Tristan Fidler, Glen Adams, Anna Dunnill, Sam Knee and Jeremy Balius. Our everlasting gratitude goes to former committee members and BFFs Rebecca Giggs, Jessyca Hutchens, Matt Giles, Sean Wilson and Simon Mongey. Poster art by tonne gramme Subscribe at cottonmouth.org.au for announcements and podcasts.

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