Gig Ryan has published five books, with another forthcoming from Brandl and Schlesinger. She is
poetry editor for The Age.





Dignitaries


1.

The light abides, the hailing trees
rattle around the house with a shrinking list
gradually cancelling all that you need, the tap
of life drips in the sink
Weeds weave and the grey tiled factory roof fills your window
Factory birds pipe like an alarm


2.

She's doing the "mastering"
Dust green light treacles across the floor
in their expressive house
His voice clings like gladwrap, favoured servant
Bored by the men's music
I'm so into not having a car
and find you in my dreams
my talisman, my completion
budding through years


3.

The father beats his wife and kids, but basically
a "good bloke" and by the end loveable
The film's patriarch chant
"Counselling the murder victims
here in Ekatarinberg, the main highway
for top-grade heroin,
I've had a great hit,
That's Thursday, 8.30"
Night plucked from its box
Receipts dangle, the coiled phone snaps
reassess the opening gift, the gaffe


4.

"I cut him when my eggs halved
Now I rub preservatives into my books and skin
curiously satisfied with life's bricks
I inject my heart to enter your city
"And light is thy fame"

The household junkie puffs her libation to the keyless tenant
It was time out but hammed"


5.

Proust's decorated parents he says, interviewed
Ten pages of the unassuming novelist
Coldness beseeches the window's logs
Irreconciled CD
dreams running and screaming

Unused to how to, the couples knock like boughs, stretched tryst
The sorrow of, ladled
Dunced words you puddle like a friend
Home to the wrecked passage
and heated desk


6.

Already the day's gone
Grey clouds stretch through wire
and the last birds call
The factory's instruments clip and saw
Industry bangs shut like a bell

and belief pricks the footpath into shards of past moments


7.

Our leader says sophistry, as in no amount of
Money and sundries spill out of the couch
Screened goody comedians spar a charm of ignorance
Clumps of work spread out
In the silent world, day draws over you
its curtained doubts in the iced street
a coupled and/or babied populace stroll
your rooms full of words slump like jewels
a cesspit, a binary set
Sometimes the ghost of the street comes to you
like a stockcube
He loves her to stop her