Afterlives

By Christopher Palmer

Christopher Palmer was born in Brisbane in 1969 and raised in the UK. He has lived in many places since returning to Australia in 1987, and currently lives in Canberra, where he completed a PhD in the biological sciences in 2005. He’s happiest in the ecotone between the arts and sciences, and moves habitually between both. His poetry has b

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Jun 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760411664

Christopher Palmer

Christopher Palmer is a former senior lecturer of English at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Castaway Tales: From Robinson Crusoe to Life of Pi, Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern. His essays have appeared in Science Fiction Studies and Extrapolation.

Book preview

Afterlives

Afterlives

Christopher Palmer

Ginninderra Press

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Afterlives

Notes

Acknowledgements

Afterlives

ISBN 978 1 74027 166 4

Copyright © Christopher Palmer 2016

Cover: Going home (detail), by Tom Roberts, oil, ca 1889, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

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First published 2016 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015 Australia

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

For J and L

feeling you gently

shaking my arm, I awoke

and found you asleep

Afterlives

Passenger flight

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I’ve studied them, and know them all.

I know them all by name.

There’s the one who walks with his head bowed; the one

who glances behind at a source of paranoia I can’t see;

the one whose beauty always captivates at first sight

before quickly falling away.

Here comes the woman

who’s never been considered a workaholic;

who dreams every kind of dream.

She always says she won’t be back on Monday

after winning the weekend lottery,

but never does.

That man over there

likes to read graffiti and people’s tattoos.

He likes alleyways and looking behind facades;

believes that every posed photo is a fake.

Behind him is the academic

who reads scientific papers all the way home.

As soon as he gets inside he closes the door to his study

and masturbates while looking at his resumé.

Across the aisle

is the woman who lives her life in the cinema.

She imagines us all as the cast of her latest movie;

the greatest actor to wear flannelette haute couture.

Out of all the people she’s met in her life

she wonders how many think of her now.

Then there’s the man

who sometimes sits