Gig Ryan’s “Albatross Diagram,” which appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review in our feature on new Australian poetry, has been selected for inclusion in this year’s edition of Best Australian Poetry. Congratulations, Gig! Here it is for you again:
ALBATROSS DIAGRAM
Expounding a triptych on a violet reed
he assumes attention
as if you’d luck in, or programmed,
like a charity on the council, learnt buccaneer
She frills his omen, doily to the chair
as a film amps decrepitude’s feast
You don’t know where to put your eyes
says you’ve got to be sure type of thing, two-pot screamer
hinged to the bar
Sky that was a pillow is all
though your chook wings fleck the footpath
and day’s vacuumed by a screen
Meet the subset, inventing dinner’s
folio of lanterns above her art of shrinking women
