AustLit

'The TV won’t stop jabbering; even while muted, captions blare. The phone won’t stop prophesying doom; the computer is its own cacophony; the Kindle idles; I move between devices like an old dog desperate for reassurance. Take all the power away and still I can’t turn off—not while an invisible killer is invisibly everywhere, which is a feeling I have had for as long as I can remember. It’s on everyone’s lips, this stupid language. I’m a poet and I shouldn’t be exhausted by what fuels me—speech, where it meets song—yet I long for silence or at least an unexpected sound. Anything other than another day of jabs. The metaphor here is a fist. Line up for your quick, sharp blow. Do not duck or weave. Resist a lifetime of conditioning. It was developed in a lab. Get it at the chemist, or your local GP, or pop-up jab hub. Your life, our lives, depend on it. Copping the hit. Coppers everywhere. On horses, in helicopters, heaped around our houses. You know the ones. Go get jabbed. We don’t have enough fists, we don’t have enough jobs. Everyone is essential. Except for the usual exceptions, of course. You know the ones.' (Introduction)