Direct quotes ABC site, I read the news Damocles oh boy, May 29, 2018 by James Walton

Direct quotes ABC site, I read the news Damocles oh boy, May 29, 2018

four men pose
swordfish 436.2 kilos
caught off Mallacoota

it kept doing jumps

and it was like someone
was dropping missiles
around the boat

we heard all these explosions

with the fish
coming up out of the water
trying to obviously

free itself

hanging by the tail
a final dive pinned to air
head to earth
in dense truncation

the glass jaw finds a surface

eye of an elephant
poached egg
the ebony yolk
scrambling breathless

the sport fishing association

animal hooked and fought
so the animal has a chance

of escaping

and a lot of them do
so I guess it’s more
like a boxing match

and you go so many rounds

and at the end
there is a victor

the year I was born 1953
off Chile 536.1 kilos
world record stands

two kilometres deep
the gene pools flash
inaudible stutter
lights the coppery speckles

of skin

free crawl
in ancient waywardness
layers between
the higher and lower feeders


James Walton
is an Australian poet published in newspapers, and many journals, and anthologies. Short listed twice for the ACU National Literature Prize, a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition – his collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ was published in 2015.

4 Replies to “Direct quotes ABC site, I read the news Damocles oh boy, May 29, 2018 by James Walton”

    • Created quite a stir locally, good healthy debate, numbers came down for the fish, too late. Don’t know what it takes for humans to wake up.

    • To add insult to injury they now claim the Australian species is a special sub species, and is therefore bigger, and more numerous…….at that weight, they are older than, the maturity of humans.

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