The Underside of Bark

By Gaetano Anthony Aiello

"With tenderness and with a true poet's eye, Gaetano Aiello brings the streets and parklands and beaches of his native Adelaide to shimmering, sometimes phantasmagorical life. The title poem, 'The Underside of Bark,' is a meditation - gripping, hallucinatory, profound - on Australian and South Australian identity, a true dreaming." - JM Coetzee<

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publicious Book Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9780648634713

Book preview

King William Street

The gift is in the shifting of shapes

So the street becomes a great table set for a wedding feast

Each building a guest drinking its fill of city workers

As they wait for bride and groom

To waltz down King William Street

The priest wears the face of the town hall clock

The groom’s father dresses in marbled grey

Supported from all sides by the long legged

Children who come after him

A black stump of a grandmother

Tiptoes from plaque and cornerstone

For the slightest peek

The gift is in the amber eye

Of traffic light

Which ushers me towards the square

I leave word at each intersection I cross

But my voice is rose petal

In the confetti of traffic moving east and west

The gift is in the faces of city window