Pink poem:

Keri Glastonbury

“Beneath the male gaze, the male nose”

                                                                   Ted Nielsen

There’s an internet radio station streaming a genome of my favourite music,

which is, surprisingly, alt.country (perfect, as you cultural role-play Tess of the

D’Ubervilles in emo glasses).

I imagine you waking up to a massive thatch of black hair/red lipstick smudge/ripped up

‘Let’s go to bed’ t-shirt, then throwing on a green leather 6 quid coat

and transforming into Amanda Plumber; rousing on me for, at best, aspiring to

middlebrow arts administrator chic.

Premenstrual, you’re a walking sack of margarine in the fields of Devon.

Wanting to sever that somatic circuit—talk to the stick, body is on hiatus.

Sitting on a milking stool in a muddy slip.

Tick, rug. Tick, chair. Tick, floorboards. But bereft of flesh.

An email mash up from correspondence between the poet and Sarah-Jane Norman (in the UK).

Keri Glastonbury (NSW) is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Newcastle. She completed a Doctorate in Creative Arts at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2005 called "Shut up, nobody wants to hear your poems".

Pink poem was written by Keri Glastonbury in response to John Brack’s The pink carpet 1970 in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery collection.