As part of the Wheeler Centre's Hot Desk Fellowship programme, Harry Reid worked on a collection of personal and historical poetry, six gay bushrangers, exploring the colonial mythos of Australia and investigating poetry’s ability to unsettle these narratives.
The excerpt below includes two poems from the collection, which looks at both forgotten histories and the present, each informing the other to create new understandings and mythologies.
i swear to god i will solve the rack man case just give me two weeks
give me something to wail on
i want instant justice like fly-spray
this train carriage is a court-room
& i’m the judge, handing down
25 to life for the man wearing btk glasses
& getting off at south kensington
at home my kitchen’s a crime scene
i’m the sheriff of the group chat like
cooking dinner i’m mad at 70’s america
do the fucking dishes guys
& take the bins out it’s wednesday
cooking dinner i’m mad at 70s america
like what the fuck were you doing
letting rodney alcala on the dating game
right in the middle of his murder spree
& how come cheryl was the only one
who thought he was a total creep?
i wash up like forensically
leave a fork in the sink like a calling card
fall asleep listening
for footsteps outside my window
watching a documentary
on the hillside strangers
think about paving the driveway with gravel
so i can hear when anyone approaches
wake up & put tiny numbered markers
all throughout the house
march my housemate around the living room
showing him where he missed with the vacuum
he hates it but he lets me
keep these little rituals
like taping off my bedroom
when i need some time alone
or microscopically examining
all the hair in the shower
so i know no-one has broken in
& used all my shampoo
it’s only because i can’t walk
through the park anymore
without my phone in one hand
& my keys in the other
so i’ll keep gary ridgway’s 48 life sentences
in my pocket for good luck
light a candle for every one
of dudley kyzer’s 10,000 years
go home & thank god
i don’t live in california
my wives, ranked
(my first and most infuriating wife)
i)
mary fucks off to oxford
and i write a pamphlet
why won’t god grant me a divorce
mary fucks off to oxford / and i write a pamphlet
ii)
mary comes back like autumn
a little older falls asleep on my chest
three years dissolve
into shame like a knot
iii)
sweet mary
gives birth in the next room
and leaves me once again
(my second and briefest wife)
katherine almost saintly
her back to me
like a re-run of the news
marriage as express train
marriage as replacement bus
this morning
from my desk
i see her in the garden
and draw the curtains
my third and best wife
o summer o england
empire falls at the touch of elizabeth !
her voice like a lighthouse
her hands like parliament
o eyesight o cromwell
both forgotten at the breast of elizabeth !
pamphlets and children be damned
i sink into a decade of paradise
and at the end i leave it all to you, elizabeth !