Four Poems by Brentley Frazer

Forgotten Corpse of Boy

Having suffered a violence at the hands
of boys and men and then went black as
lambs in molasses . . . threatened
to come back with a gun, and meant it.

Cop father, 1986, stashed it behind the
waterbed in one of those tins you can
open with any wardrobe key and a few
bullets collected from the washing
machine, over time. Thought
seriously about the consequences (the
lure of infamy versus twenty years in
a concrete box) . . .

No one knows what happened to the
boy who sat on my chest and struck me
unconscious, he does, but nobody else. 

Spent hours oiling the gun afterwards.






Bloodle

A scene of a séance (of sorts)
in an abandoned water station
above a weeded dam. Numerous
dead turtles, smashed shells,
spray painted pentagrams and
quotes from Marilyn Manson.

Awful that Stanley let his wolf
off the leash one afternoon right here
when a bogan came up over the weir
reeling in homosexual guilt; I know
this because his breath smelt of
beer and semen as he beat me.

I knifed him twice, the first
struck xylophonic on a rib, the
second had him kicking similar
to a kitten hit with a ball hammer,

last summer . . . Stanley hadn’t
cut his teeth, visited in dreams
came with Inspiration, departed
with Despair. But then he left
me like a skin on a fence, started
an instagram account and won’t
share the password . . . posts
only photographs of dead birds.






Insomnia Kitten Creeps In

The fifty meter freestyle
inter-school carnival day
but never felt embodied
until at least twenty one.

Foxy all the girls call him,
turned on the block and
punched.

No action from the teachers;
corner him while changing
and marvel at the blood as
he sobs devil-less and pale.

The brutality of Lloyd who
carries a calf castrating knife
gold tooth gleams as he guts
a kangaroo, crushes the joey
beneath boot heel in the dust.

Bashes a potato sack of blue
heeler pups against a concrete
tank-stand on a sunny morning.





Several Ghosts

in the dark beauties of drugs
 on the pension ~ John Forbes

On Boundary Street I often
see a homeless woman; barely
bones bound together
by the Salvation Army. She either

pinballs between pedestrians asking
for money, sprints up and down
as though about to miss a terminal
appointment or sits on the footpath

laughing with several ghosts.

Sometimes I see her arguing for a
free ride on the bus. The driver let
her on today. Next to me she sits,
mumbling and trembling like a
butterfly in a spider web. Soon she
produces a notebook, smoothes it
open on her lap, manifests a Little 
Mermaid pencil and taps it awhile.
Then, in a majestic cursive script
she writes
                     
                      “The Vampires, every
where. Indigenous...
semantic assimilation, methadone
and butter with golden syrup. Oh
Father who art doesn’t please
please forgive my brothers.”



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 Bio: Brentley Frazer is an Australian poet, academic and editor. Currently he lectures in poetry at Griffith University and is editor-in-chief of open access humanities magazine, Bareknuckle Poet Journal of Letters.​ www.brentley.com 

[email protected]
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