Bob Perelman Feature

Nicole Markotić

Three poems

 — ’Gongers: A Remake
 — it’s an emergency, how we emerge
 — emergency nouns

’Gongers: A Remake


              First Short (for theatrical release)

The film wants: “underneath on top”


              Second Short

now, licking Australia’s too ironic — obviously — knee muscles, the film wants, for the nation’s director, “hard cash to be a blockbuster with unneeded subtitles.”


from behind the DVD credits, voiced-over by Keats’s billabong verse, mother-figurehead bobs unevenly for pearls, or candied camera obscura.

This bog-standard
raw-boned Canadian poem
              battered by ice floes dumped into a tropical bathing swim

Wasn’t the wine. It. “Boutique” or otherwise
Mudgee was a very good year,
and scotch means severed fingers, several times

as long as the reader believes / what you see

narrative plot divvied into couplet slices
“hydrangea
concerns”


              Third Short

That was in the poem.

the neo is taking over everywhere, branding its novel logo

word shortenings: cute and efficient: Sab Cav, shrapnel tipping,
                              neg. cap.
scraps of ode anticipate mains never entrées

chequered tablecloths mean waltzing nationalism
or a line break without a page.


              Fourth Short

Every time, the actor chooses to name himself “Otto” —
—  even when he means “Carolina”

during the monologue, there’s nothing to eat
but roasted lamb, basil-cashew dip, pinot noir marinade,
                              earl grey tea.
Taste.
raw

The director based the movie on time-share seminars
Anyone who sells futures could co-produce

shrugs: “how’d you go, darl?”

in the movies, murder never counts when the collateral damage is a hired guard. Action flicks slip into war terminology exactly because it’s correct.

“no-oh-ew-oooe-O-uo.”
Or: “col-dam” means the characters wear wine-charcoaled shirts
           .or

“like eucalypt down a koala’s snout!”
Or in tandem.

Thus the New Zealand-Australian-subclassed-Brit-(obviously)-
                            epistletizing-actor
superimposed onto DVD extra features
by the novel footage of “a neo” novella
                                                                      limps

The film wants to heal
to unpin/unpeg the butterflies symbolically
          fluttering, mis-en-scène, slow-mo across the screen
No technical jargon!


              Fifth Short

“quarter-to” emerges as foor
on the Wollongong industrial coal-driven-yoga-overlayed beat.

A mist of

A harvest of

You wills! You wills!

“for the gum trees, the snorkel-equipped cars, the sad wombat hitchhikers, and the home with no steps
for “sold-at-cost” novelty —  . . .

“Beyond the blind:
the end — monsoon machines” cue
Byron’s bear, interrupting the wrong movie

Swim between the flags!

while the decade slithered up the escarpment
(surely the poem’s no longer on the down-and-down?)

“You — Hypocritical reader! centuries from Wollongong — if you need me” don’t sprinkle organic cereal onto your collier “basket-pressed” platforms.

How many times can you backspace over the present
             without shorting typewriter memory?


              Primal Shot

21 shots on page 21, plus a double-coda
Or add hot&spicy garbanzo chips, to taste.

the Dr. Seuss tree tops
the football-shaped hail
the golf-course-horticultural green


The film wants Hoon Day and fair-dinkum, and shot glasses, and “Australian-rules cricketball.” The film wants arrow metaphors, and a corked Nosey Parker, and ’strewth, and Houyhnhnms (again).

Thus: a boomerang may as well substitute for a walker. A walker for a skateboard. A motorized scooter for a yellow-tipped cane. Obviously: fade to purple mangosteen.


it’s an emergency, how we emerge

genuine mahogany weds genius megaphone
graphic webs gain much

lights out or talk is cheap
try lying about the outcome or cheating with chalk

it’s been a riot of insurgent peons
don’t bend the rules for has-been poems

cry forward, sweep back
causes are for the warden who sleeps with his back to the door

or are you attacking form today?
rare is the toady who forces your heart attack

when will you lay the length of your fingernail against skin?
he will lie behind the magnet his kin nailed to the fridge

open, a first edition provides fewer words
heroes rarely wipe their feet at the back door

she tends to fist Eddy’s pro-video fever
shepherds harken first to the vibe in the chèvre

he’s so ripe, he deposited foot odour at the bank
stripes deepen the colour when loosening Babar

whine about more than his cocky fantasy lore
why not love clitty fans-cum-tease-me more?


emergency nouns

ketchup and stop signs and neon electric man
can’t say up and shouldn’t trick No Man’s Plaza

the lime that’s my favourite
let me rhyme favour

a flight of
stairs

expert Schmier players lose for the win
perverts schmooze more than in winter

stare longer than you need but back up the moose
are you longing to feed butt’s backed-up caboose?

fly by
straits

cantankerous she, leaves every eon
can’t anchor amour, shelves open eves

are you dieting by dusk? do you waver? or fast?
yard flavour welcomes rink-y-dink quest

Nicole Markotićis a poet, critic, and novelist who teaches English Literature, Creative Writing, and Disability Studies at the University of Windsor. She edits the chapbook publication, Wrinkle Press, and has worked as a book editor for various presses. Markotić has written two books of poetry: Connect the Dots and Minotaurs & Other Alphabets (Wolsak & Wynn) and a novella about Alexander Graham Bell, Yellow Pages (Red Deer Press), and has published her writing in Capilano Review, filling Station magazine, Nomados chapbooks, and Open Letter. Her latest book, Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot, is published by Arsenal Press (2008).