poem | Brendan McCallum

mirror of the times

sunday papers the same old parade
freshly pressed pimple-free model flesh
the same faces behind recycled a-list events
notable somebodies
nobody
has ever heard of [interspersed
                         with the comfortably familiar
different names
same faces

                      unattainable status]

                      & the poetry of taglines:

                      property (‘you wish’)
                      finance (‘inform the affluent’)

beauty lift-outs a million pages of sport and    cars
shell-games and gatecrashers
and the question of just when did vacuity
hijack society?

Overland 183–winter 2006, pp.68