Michelle Gaddes - Two Poems

Sticks for Friends

A Walden-esque burlesque
or some romantic rubbish –
deep in boar ravaged
fragrant fawn forest.
Between the ocean and
lost green – feral couches
cower when winds whip
raggedy shit-house doors.
Tragic bandicoots raid empty
muddled cupboards looking
for showgirls in sugar
bags. Scat, like snow,
blankets beds and it
reeks as it speaks long
to the day. The tap-tap-
tap of a keyboard echoes
from keyholes. The clock
reverts medieval, sacks the
second hand for conspiracy
while Mary-Lou asphyxiates in
spider cyber-space with piracy.
The sticks, for friends –
hit windows, find ways
into beds and crunch
during peak hour drive
time in labyrinths of lonely
moss.



Oniony Overtones

You wanted your body donated to science, you said last year.
A university specimen – to be probed, prodded, pulled apart,
pickled even. Definitely deconstructed like a Foucauldian text.
They would keep you stored on a sterile steel shelf and
the harsh lab lights would accentuate your unsettled veins.
Sticking out like bad NSW roads – your marbled colours
would intrigue ghosts. And the marinade you drip would
fill the campus with oniony overtones; everyone always hungry.
It’s all rather kinky really – a sly plot to have lean academics
handling your swollen heavy bits. They’ll write stories about
your body, perhaps find cures and solve the riddle of
the Sphinx. Professors will nod on the nod and late night
researchers dabbling in fornications will knock you over, smashed.
Glass spiders biting and riding orgasmic music on liquids
like tsunamis, with a thin streak of green. They nip you.
An eyeball here, a pancreas strewn on linoleum and your phallus
making a run for the window – a lab for the absurd.
They sweep you up with a Go-Lo brush, all your bits
they shovel into one large urn. They’d adjust your plaque
and store you in vodka. Naturally, the campus would go
hungry and become alcoholics.



Michelle Gaddes lives in NSW, Australia and writes poetry and short stories. Her first publication is titled Pariah and she has a forethcoming titled, Aurora Borealis by Ginninderra Press.