Four Sonnets

1

Dear Siobhan, hello. Is it 5.15 am where you are?
I don’t weep since You. ‘For contrast & shock,’
you say, ‘Zaha Hadid—her winning designs never
built—her first building in Baghdad.’ Today

the new Enmore pool—the four of us, then the Carlisle
on Albermarle with Tory—she calls our boy ‘The Malley’
which he almightily is. If I could play an instrument
to amuse you: the theremin. This poem (like others)

is to amuse you. Ships pitched our antecedents into
thin air & colonial goldfields & we cheer their resolve;
it results in us. You say ‘the Perth developments are better
with mature trees’, and they are, almightily they are.

Still able & socially active, let’s live on the top floor, &
every day lap the Enmore. I ratchet through the week.

2

(I’d like to pick up where I left off (left you,
that is (tracking in the snow (lets you know
you can’t track everywhere, not even in light
falls (& where’d you get to just then with yr

elemental final sentence (‘stone & water’
(remember the 1st of the 2nd 04—it’s the divisibility
of the date (it’s a strange dream of alienation
in which: dad’s yellow ute (so keep yr letters

to young poets to make paper cranes (sure
we’re easy oars, sure I saw Esau kiss Kate¹
down in the orchestra pit (down in the downy
pit (down to her painted toes (oh noes (& sure

yr ease awes² (& yr desire, aged & lowing (till you
shuck out of the car; clods of field, clots of blood (

3

Noisy mynors catch & chase over the street. Yr ex
throws out yr monogrammed effects (robe, slippers,
travel case, toiletry bag), auctions the rest on eBay
& about now yr a GFC bankrupt erased on a stoop,

so pause & make of yr carcass a new partner,
an adjustment, a honed invention out of cadence,
out of tone, right out of mid-century abstract
expressionism make a nice suit, a shell. Before you

statues knit forecourts to antiquity, to imports & a cooling,
vaporous sky—gigalitres of high-volume air wash
through yr shopping experience & yr borne along
mezzanines which don’t fit anymore, not when you order

online & option the consequences. Once I was in love
(a longing? a longueur? dunno) & I lowered us both.

4

News is my landscape—oh great, it’s Australian
gothic. Apothecaries kiss their sweethearts
in the stockroom on breaks & bump & jumble
Rectogesic (fr treatment of anal fissures, apply

twice daily) & Vicks Vaporub. No romantic melancholy
left? Never mind—you need it less than you
think, FFS. For you I’ll be appearing in band mode—
the best-dressed, best-in-show, strong opening,

chandelier-swinging crooner & you, darling bud, up
on stage with yr bluegrass tunes & tight banjo-rich
hick panegyrics (oh the yips, licks & lyrics)
are so cool in an acceptably indecent & benign

Gen Y way—I heart yr 80s pants suit & yr Bali Writers
Retreat keepsake flashcards: See. Feel. Touch. Write.

© Adrian Wiggins