Stuart Barnes born & raised in Hobart, Tasmania, currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he edits PASH capsule, a journal of contemporary love poetry. At the moment he's working on Blackouts and other poems, a manuscript dedicated to the memory of Gwen Harwood, Australian poet & librettist, who encouraged the eleven-year-old him to write poetry. Poems are forthcoming in Southerly, Windmills, Mascara Literary Review, Establishment Magazine (UK), & Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry (USA).
Dissociation
the Australian Grim Reaper TV commercial first screened on April 5, 1987
Wet on Wellington: “Melbourne’s Finest Gay Pool and Sauna”
The waiting
lane, a ten-pin’s
set, then rocks and
strikes the waxen pine,
snatches
at a metal frame—
The Tiger lily-orange
five-pin
obfuscates
raised lesions
Three candlepins,
cheeks milked of fat,
roll psychic eyes
to sandy walls
forget forget forget
black bowling balls
and silver scythes
A doctor’s
stiff like Wet on
Wellington’s
artificial
marble gods
I’m (this scene
so close to the bone)
a classical bystander also
