Rearrangement 1
by Ian Gibbins
Eventually, she turns and says to me
“Where are you coming from, mate?”
She says, “What planet are you on, eh?”
The night is jumpy with crickets and frogs,
but I get the hint and head outside, leave
the fly-wire door a few words ajar.
Then I reach up, grab a bloody great
piece of sky, lay it flat across last-week’s
barbecue trestle-top. “Look here,” I say,
“over here.” Through the veranda dust
and beetle wings, I can tell she thinks
I’m joking, just inventing all this shit.
So I take a slice of moon and polish it
with my breath. “Look, here,” I say again,
“here.” Behind the screen, she whistles,
and I reckon maybe it’s working, yes,
maybe I’m in with a chance. So I
collect a handful of stars, the brightest
in my zodiac (Achernar, Betelgeuse, Alpha
Centauri; Sirius, Formalhaut, Canopus),
until the hinges creak, swing wide open,
until there she is, not a bit surprised, and,
before I know it, constellations fall to my feet,
five fingers of moonlight swell her breasts.
Here is a video version of the poem, as well as the rest of the sequence…