Tremors in Five Tanka
I daydream about
how my first girlfriend kissed me,
remember her scent
when making love with my wife.
What is infidelity?
I look up and see
my daughter bend down to pat
a stranger’s poodle.
I hear sirens, see gurneys
and gore. But the dog licks her.
She pulls me into
the courtyard, her colour gone,
eyes wide. As I brace
for fists, fragile hands implore
me in a way that words can’t.
Stupor slowly lifts
as daylight cracks me open,
pinned like a beetle
inside the castle I made
from the bottles I emptied.
I’ve been here before
but only on the sidelines.
A new ballgame now:
flesh goes into extra time
as my MRI begins.
**
Art Imitating Life
Everyone in that Alice studio
seemed to know everyone else.
No introductions, but a call to order:
private writing for an hour or more,
then someone would tell us to stop.
I noticed how quickly the others began,
their gossip dropping inside the hush
and warming the spaces between them.
A weathered arelhe1 shuffled in
from the dusty forecourt, hugging
her cloths of patterns and dots. ‘Hello!’
A plaintive entreaty, reedy-voiced.
She blinked as some of us raised
our heads and then went back to typing.
Once more: ‘Hello!’ Extending
the art we hadn’t the nerve or courtesy
to acknowledge, let alone buy.
Another tortured, wordless pause,
then she stumbled back onto the street.
She reminded me of other Arrernte2
removed from pubs for taking food
that patrons left behind.
They’re custodians of slender means
on the Country of their blood.
But the cold decorum we clung to,
the bogus belonging I failed to risk
right there, in that creative space
where we were the impostors.
Our refusal and dismissal
with our oh-so eloquent silence—
we’re worried about what else
you might demand from us—
the following year
three out of five of our piebald
but pervasively singular pantomime
of a nation wrote our cruel vignette
once more, in ten-foot letters:
enshrining it in infamy,
not law, at the ballot box.
Later still, some people
south and east of Alice changed
their minds about this. Up to a point.
And that’s a good thing.
But I’ve never seen that arelhe
since she trudged away that night.
I’d like to know if her paintings
are still for sale.
**
It’s All in the Preparation
it’s a punchline loop in my head … we’re so happy you’ve offered us
first refusal on your book … because that’s all we’re able to give you
just now … they won’t say that exactly … but they might want to
unless my words are thought-provoking … or a little philosophical …
or a little pathological … they should be like radioactive blow darts
even if that scares some folks away … God who am I kidding here …
winning a slam might have helped … but that’s really not my style …
formalism’s back but it’s being mangled … only one measly percent
of the population reads or listens to poetry … even when the rhymes
and rhythms are okay … I’m not sure I know the difference anymore …
what else can I say about climate grief … or the death of democracy …
or the dearth of kindness … when my lines peter out in generalities …
at least some of my followers might buy it … especially if I put on
a launch for it … but they’ll probably only come for the free wine …
how many of them even drink wine … someone might want to ask
me about it on a blog or podcast … but I’ll just sound too privileged
or insensitive … I’m imagining a little pep talk before it comes out …
if it ever comes out of course … because getting it out is like push-
starting a car in the rain … I’ll be a footy coach bawling at myself:
they’ll never believe your work’s any good unless you believe it too …
or unless all they really want … is to scream at a typeset poltergeist …
sigh at a rom-com … or replay the world in symbols I can’t read …
Glen Hunting is currently based in Mparntwe, Arrernte Country (Alice Springs, NT). He writes about estrangement and (be)longing, cultural culpability, (en)gendered notions of bodies and behaviour, and the difficulty of recognising truth in the age of mass misinformation. He was a joint winner of the 2024 Liquid Amber Emerging Poet Prize, and his poems have been published in Plumwood Mountain, Oystercatcher One, Brushstrokes V and VI, Verandah, Meniscus, and elsewhere. He undertook residential fellowships at Varuna and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in 2024 and 2025, respectively, to work on a first collection of poetry.
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