CHRIS PALAZZOLO studied literature, philosophy and media at Murdoch University. He writes poetry, short fiction, long fiction and non-fiction.

His book Personal Logistics is a poetry collection that details his experiences and observations of life in the East Kimberley, as someone who has worked as a farmhand and as a stay-at-home dad.

Read on for a poem.

READING BEING AND NOTHINGNESS AT PARDOO ROADHOUSE

Nothing is going to save you

from no longer being,

for there is being

only non-being,

and that is being – that’s it –

always and forever (until death) –

being is fleeing

and its residue,

watching from non-being,

an echo designated consciousness.

Consciousness. Yes! Mourning

the missing now. It all makes sense.

That fluorescent bar makes sense,

that tv bracket makes sense,

in a donga the very essence of which

is a fraught relationship

to Here. After all, what’s

my Here, my Now,

after 1900ks of driving?

Not landscapes,

Not scenery – a car cabin

ponging of sweat

and spilled thermos coffee.

I saw Port Hedland today

the first time in my life.

I didn’t really see it

because there was nothing to see;

from the bypass

it is a far proximity,

an empire

monstering so delicately

so spindly powerlined across a plain

of grasses, rail, and oxide mounds –

a white sky too big for human eyes,

some thin cloud, low, to the south.

I missed it, in the same way

consciousness misses the Now –

and that was the truest consciousness –

the soft pupa of muscle and bone

making the machine go –

the steady pressure of the foot –

the torsion of arms and hands –

ever alert eyes

darting on gauges,

blinking

the dust smear of refracted light –

a cyborg equipoise

which has its place

thinking, responding – for they’re our

machines out there on that red world

extracting their own matter –

but somewhere inside

where the metaphysical parts

of our machines reside

I knew the terror of kinship

with transformers and wharves.

**********

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Palazzolo was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1966. He grew up in the coastal town of Rockingham where a variety of beach cultures, tidy and secretive suburbs, and the proximity of the refining industrial estate of Kwinana continues to infuse his sensibilities into middle age.

He studied literature, philosophy and media at Murdoch University and seemed on track for an academic career before he ‘tuned in, turned on dropped out’ to pursue an economically hazardous life as an Australian writer. He can turn his hand to poetry, short fiction, long fiction, non-fiction, has self-published extensively and been shortlisted for a handful of national awards, including the ABC Fiction Award in 2009 and the Seizure Viva La Novella Award in 2014.

He lives in the East Kimberley region of North Western Australia with his wife and three children.

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