Featuring George Douglas Anderson

I have edited Bold Monkey for over ten years. I like to use this electronic space to promote the writings of the alternative small press. Sometimes I feel an urge to add to the pile.

I grew up below the tracks in NDG in Montreal and moved to New Zealand and then to Australia in my early 20s.

My main spark in writing poetry was ignited in 2000 when a close friend of mine died of throat cancer. As his corpse edged its way towards the curtains of the crematorium I reckoned I needed to get some of my shit down.

A few days later,  I was in a hall supervising a Year 12 exam. The words just flew out of me and I wrote them down on a spare pad of paper in the back of the hall. The poem 'The Portal' will shortly be included in a chapbook of my school poems of the same name and published by poet & editor John D. Robinson of Holy & Intoxicated Press. Click on any image below to enlarge.

Here  is a brief sampling of some of my work and where you may find it:

A Beginner’s Guide To Death

My mother died
one late November afternoon

my young sisters found her
on their bottom bunk bed
with pissed pants.

Returning from my paper route
I slide through the back door
& I was surprised to see Mr White
the old man
my brothers & sisters
heads bowed as if in prayer.

A few days later
my mother lay deep in the womb
of the funeral home
on Sherbrooke Street
her cheeks
tinted with rouge make-up
like a whore.

My father was so distraught
he left the funeral arrangements
to others
the service hi-jacked by Christians
punctuated by the rallying cry
of centuries old, out-of-tune hymns 
& the uttering of hollow prayers.

The old man sat directly 
behind me during the service 
& from time to time
he would edge closer
& whisper into my ear
in a deep growl
that I alone could hear:

‘Bullshit. 
Fucking bullshit.’

(Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019)

From the chapbook FUCKWITS & ANGELS (Holy & Intoxicated Publications, UK 2019). SOLD OUT. 'The Burial' first appeared in The Bones of Nirvana, Svensk Apache, 2016. Illustration by the Swedish artist Janne Karlsson.

KEITH

Keith is a regular who usually shows up at three in the afternoon for his “daily constitution”- a pint of Dark Ale. He always wears a sharp suit and his shoes are immaculately cleaned and polished. He is a World War 2 veteran who fought in Tobruk against Rommel, but like most veterans, he never talks about his experiences. His secrets are buried deep within him. 

One day, we get around to talking about shoes. I tell Keith I recently purchased a pair of shoes on the internet. A friend was getting married in Leichhardt and I was best man. He perks up.

“Oh, what size do you wear?”

“Twelve. Why do you ask?”

“I thought so. I’ve got just the pair for you.”

“Don’t worry Keith, I’ve already got a pair.”

“Nonsense.”

The next day Keith enters the bar and hands me a beautifully polished pair of black shoes. 

“Try this lot on,” he says.

I’m impressed. I slip them on.

“They fit perfectly. They’re wonderful, where did you get them?”

“Oh, they were home collecting dust. You must have them.”

“Keith, they are so shinny I can actually see my face in them.”

“Young people don’t put in the effort these days,” he says.

Keith reaches in his bag and pulls out a can of black shoe polish and a clean rag.

“Here, have these as well. The secret is in the muscle you put behind it, and in this,” as he lands a large gob of spit on the toe of the shoe.

I laugh in admiration.

“Thanks Keith, where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Early on at Tobruk, sometimes we spent four hours a days cleaning our boots. It gave us something to do as we were preparing to take on the Krauts.”

From my short story collection The Empty Glass. There is some heavy, confronting shit about alcoholism & Australia's drinking culture in the book, so it's not for everyone: https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2020/02/new-release-george-anderson-empty-glass.html

Elvis on the Factory Floor

For a time I worked 

in a factory

slipping tiny plastic sleeves 

onto the gold wings

of ski bindings

then cooking the plastic

on a slow moving conveyor belt

under a hot lamp

until the plastic molded to the steel

& then plopped 

into a box.

One summer’s day 

as the steel presses boomed

& the rivet guns clanked,

I heard on the radio 

that the King

had died.  

Heart attack. 

Aged 42. 

White wings 

every five 

seconds 

free-falling

into that 

greasy 

cardboard 

box.

From my chapbook Teaching My Computer Irony (Epic Rites Press- Punk Chapbook Series 2, 2016).

Buy the chapbook series here: http://www.epicrites.org/punk-chapbook-series.html

Auntie Via

Most Wednesdays

I visit my Auntie Via

with my mom at Peria House-

she’s nearly 85 years old

She has a glass eye

it sits there  staring at you

with a blue icy blankness

Last week- my mom was talking to her

about her brother & the weather-

she was propped up in bed

& struggling to recall my face

when suddenly her eye popped out

& rolled down her pyjamas

& into the folds of her bed

She sat there

blissfully unaware

of that sunken hole amongst

the bones in her face-

two nurses laughed as they 

    scrambled to pull the bed apart,

searching for that elusive eye

I watch fascinated 

as her glass eye 

                       bounces-

                                     onto the

                                                floor-

                                                                & rolls under her commode

After a quick clean

her eye is popped back 

         into      place

& Auntie Via is harnessed tightly

into her side chair

I closely scrutinise her,

trying to recall

which one is real-

her two eyes like 

blank slits in the 

early evening’s funereal light

From the children's chapbook Melting Voices (Perspicacious Press, 2011). The poem was originally published in The School Magazine (2010):

Melting Voices was a chapbook of poems used for classroom purposes and is not available online.

Doonside

You make an impromptu entrance into my life

kicking open with considerable skill the shed door

housing heavily chained bikes & grass cutting equipment-

Leo, our enigmatic Chow sends you away; for now

the following evening you reappear

a blackened, indecipherable shape through a small square front entry window

I voyeurishly watch you bending over 30 metres away

examining     perhaps admiring in a humoured, knowing manner

the challenge of our new fish hook dead lock

barefooted-

with a Bob Bailey autographed baseball bat in hand

I CHARGE flat-out        silently         towards you

murderously-  I know fully

I’m going to SMASH YOUR FACE IN

when I catch you

you are elusive-

you down the tools of your trade

& sprint headlong to the front fence

& fling yourself precariously

carelessly

over the 2 metre metal fence

the dog now awake to its task                    

chasing you, us

leaping the fence in one wild bound     

I pursue you 

down the blue metal street                                                              

you disappearing 

through a conveniently cut wire fence     

into the disused brickworks

I shout out menacingly to you:

I’LL KILL YEAH!! (& really mean it)

& thrash the air several times with the baseball bat for effect

The police arrive the next day

& tell me he could have had a knife

& slashed my face or torso

entering it deep & cold

me lying wounded   oozing

like a slashed waterbed

or the shit smeared walls

they've often left behind

From my first chapbook Dancing on Thin Ice (erbacce-press 2008): http://erbacce-press.webeden.co.uk/george-anderson/4529601467

Also keep an eye out for my full-length collection of portrait poems The Rough End of the Pineapple (Uncollected Press, 2020): 

Chopper

 

On the North Mountain his incinerated Harley

leans against a spruce tree close to his red cedar cabin

 

ten years after the event a charred monument to an

unpredictable speed wobble throttling up Aylesford Road

 

at 130 the handle bars wildly flopping, the decision to fling

his bike forwards, to leap off the bike backwards in the dark

 

his wistful attempt to cradle his hands together/back straight & then to slide like a lit missile along the rough asphalt road- 

 

without leathers- his skin peeling off in strips- until hitting a bump & then sent screaming into a ditch, rolling into barbed 

 

wire; knocked unconscious. Of the searing, mind needling pain/his back & legs and ass ground into the pavement &

 

blackened like overcooked beef.

From The Rough End of the Pineapple. Available through Uncollected Press here: https://therawartreview.com/2020/07/16/book-published-the-rough-end-of-the-pineapple-by-george-douglas-anderson/

Note: A sharp bikie, remarked that the incinerated bike above is not a Harley but a Yamaha V-Max. He's correct. Harley just sounds better!

Update: 14 January 2022

New book soon to be released by Holy & Intoxicated Publications. Terrific cover by Henry Denander: