“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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01 November 2015

LICKING THEIR TINY WINDOW

 







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goanna telling ant



you're the ant working one of those cool
double gullies where real old
toungue-in-groove wall timbers meet

you'd look ahead down it and remark on
its classicism its capacity to silently
weather very slow must be something
built by some great civilisation they
come here well before your mob eh

nah mate they came they're going

when I saw they made their air of blocks
drystone style – no mortar
I got trouble with the tiny gaps

it was better on the days the masons
chamfered the corners something about
that neat angle where the bricks kiss

a fit ant would follow your twitch down that gulch
raybanned bi-vid fixed upon your beautiful
abdarsomen across them polished mandibles

but we always get shit like this bastard
just straight basalt blocks cut so square
you’d think the cracks were drawn on

no escape from my whipping licker

for a time I had trouble a virus something
bacterial fourteen outa the venturi each side
inch long in the old money up my
nose pretty on the end poison
darts from jungle blowpipes

I couldn't breathe you

it was easy but bled once I picked
this nose these nostrils these purpose-built
claws ripped so fuckin dumb shrinkwrap
soft strapped tight outa the choked

shit it felt good

but how did that evolve from lizard scales
them pinfeathers up my hooter?

don't worry I'm on bigger game now

climbed from blank bank walls to
church reptile sniff twitch fresh empty

great warriors rip each other to bits
they put their best clothes on

rush like you ants shove prickle
each other wrap valiant wadding
listen for sirens and wait for platelets

they do not know anybody

I lick their tiny window




philip white









Tailem Bend ... photo Philip White ... goanna advice came outa the spare parts bin ... you may have seen some of it before on on here somewhere

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