A Scene from Rush Parataxis
(a scene from the Canadian plains)
Matthew Hall (University of Western Australia, Australia)
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blooding the dogs to sparrow sounds
comparative histories are grey-sky words
smoke signals the corruptor of hawks
and the hunt through milked streams, stillness
the anaesthetic that defies encampment rings
distances not visible in pale aubade light
earthly flesh of information transfer
feints over wilderness inexorable smoke
communication transmuting distance by winds
of migration have spoken grain by grain
on the tangled edge of the prairie
fire consumes all vastness one is broken
into impelled by the drugs of other histories
the ground idylls in rock paintings
well disposed to particular narratives
fenceless lost cultures diurnal
the lexicon of spear grass
totem poles appear ashen in depthless soil
these scalps hanging from my every hand
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Matthew Hall has recently moved to Perth and is working on a thesis on J.H. Prynne and the ‘Cambridge School of Contemporary Poetics’. His poetry and prose have most recently has been featured in ditch, Misunderstandings Magazine, Science Creative Quarterly, Cordite Poetry Review and Foam:e. He is working on a book of poetics and a book of poetry based on the radical pastoral. The small, but irrevocable, Brutal Tender Human Animal: Reflections on the Photography of Roger Ballen is available from Trainwreck Press.
