Issue 27: Barnaby Smith

exhibit

‘Visual cues suggest an extreme sonic environment’

— Lawrence English on latent sound, 2016


‘I like to think of latent sound as a kind of spectral haunting’

— Lawrence English, 2020


the attendant is

reading the Qu’ran best

leave him to his

tone poem

his mood piece

his

gentle octaves


understand as you do

waterways

of the old town

& dark hills behind


as you do

rhythms 

absorbed from artefacts—


artefacts go

on eating each other


then reset as cold

in proud white rooms

that buzz & cough

cough

cough


*


the act of attending:

noble if to nothing


latent sound is nothing

ignited

ignited

nothing


from studied

woman by the door

& aching feet exodus


[dilating tones]

quarrel          cuddle          squirm           peep           ignite

sigh               stretch         perform         notate         imbibe  

grit                house          locate            imagine           


his

imagined

conversations with

the walls & let loudness


occur

& inhabit

deep, invisible time—


frequencies staying lost

as realities come & go—

subterranean

& remote as breath

the semantic problems of child-rearing (i-iii)

the dog died


my mother cocked her head

on an afternoon

& a year or so later

the 1990s felt like

vague heat

tangled up / it is imagined

told or guessed

 


last thing at night


dull lingering impressions in the country

& inescapable frequent sadness

for children, clumsy & limited

with beasts on the doorstep


haunting is the word—

the muffled squeak inside

defeated by a wandering neighbour

they’re gone & that’s all



not drowned


not drowned. but in the absence of answers

psychology grows & grows

                 evidence is usually better:

                 a wet body isn’t speculated

no questions for the empty day


indoors is well-meaning

overflowing usually

           towards one reality

           damaged & blurred—

           the supposed

                       years as myth

Barnaby Smith is a poet, critic, journalist and musician living on Darug and Gundungurra land near Sydney, Australia. Recent work has appeared in journals such as Erbacce (UK), Orbis (UK), Marble (UK) and Blaze Vox (US), as well as Cordite, Southerly, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Poetry Anthology, Best Australian Poems, and more. He is an award-winning art and music critic, and records music under the name Brigadoon, having released the album, Itch Factor, in 2020.


Copyright © 2022 by Barnaby Smith, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.