Ross Clark

Ross Clark teaches part-time at two universities in Brisbane, Australia. Seven volumes of his poetry have been published (Salt Flung into the Sky, Ginninderra, 2007), and two chapbooks of haiku. He has toured his work as writer, performer and workshopper to city and rural Australia, to Japan, and through central Texas. He is currently working on a teenage verse novel trilogy and a DVD of himself in performance (with The Mongreltown Allstars). www.crowsongs.com

Chook, Chook

                   1

they have gone off, they will not lay me eggs. three chooks, and not a single egg produced. i need a china egg to encourage them by fooling them, but all i have is my shaker, my percussion egg, filled with seeds and painted gold, so that will have to do.

                                                 in the morning, they have laid their clutch of warm eggs; all of them brown, but i can celebrate my brilliant husbandry, golden as a percussionist’s egg, with a little jig, unaccompanied and careful, up the stairs to the kitchen. 

           2

from childhood practice, back when we sold eggs direct from our farm, we still date them all by hand, the phone-message pencil just right for the four or so our chooks produce each day. we give them to neighbours, visitors, eat plenty ourselves, always from the earliest date. whenever and however i cook them, i will be eating yesterday, swallowing the past, enjoying.

For the Next Seven Days ...

i want to write a poem 
	so tough that 
	it hurls Uluru back into space 
	and dives down into the crater 
		singing 

i want to write a poem 
	so revelatory that 
	God weeps with shock 

i want to write a poem 
	so complete that 
	dictionaries illustrate every word 
	with a quotation from it 

i want to write a poem 
	so minimalist that 
	when i open the page 
	to read it aloud   (but 
	before i say anything) 
	everybody thinks of you 

i want to write a poem 
	so lyrical that 
	the Amazon   the Nile 
	the Yang-Tze	
	the Mississippi-Missouri 
	and the Murray-Darling 
	will flow symphony after symphony 
		forever 

i want to write a poem 
	so soft that 
	when i read it aloud 
	my breath shivers on your nipples 

i want to write a poem