Jill Jones

​Edge Against Sign

my life is about letters
against rust around the garden
and weeds at the tips of
your fingers below the horizon beyond
midnight roar for the magic ring
from the poster in the right-hand
pocket into small grottoes of sweet
biscuits like blazes of tourism and
local fashion on a gum leaf

out flat over a small round
table round the side through
shattered glass to rocky outcrops under
freeway pylons up into the
valley with feet with friends with
insects up in the building under
noise towards the open doorway

through smallest lens round the
lit-up tank over a guitar case
out into universes on the table
of used plates like something I dreamed
into silent gullies drains dumping grounds
in a place in a room in
wires from dark green hollows

for a second down by the
harbour behind its dull red wall
at the centre above police
car at the corner at edge
against sign breaking
being wide awake after
death perhaps

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JILL JONES has published nine books of poetry, and a number of chapbooks. The latest is The Leaves Are My Sisters, a self-published chapbook from an Adelaide-based collaborative venture, Little Windows Press. Other recent books include The Beautiful Anxiety and Ash Is Here, So Are Stars. She edited, with Michael Farrell, Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets.