Real estate: that’s all Postumia can think about,
always bragging about her ‘portfolio’,
dragging it round like a bad painter.
At last count she owns eight flats
in suburbs she’s never visited,
not in her randiest dreams –
places she’s never even read in,
the ‘open mics’ she dominates.
‘I’m in love with negative gearing,’
she wails (her first romance in years).
Word is it’s the title of her new Selected.

Syllabus

On his deathbed – faux deathbed really,
life having more torture in store for him –
Suffenus wrists the Persian nurse,
the pretty one with sherbet breath,
demands to know if he’s still read,
still appreciated, in her penal province.
He read there once when his odes were fresh –
‘the brutish wine, the audience of nine’.
Clueless about verse and the ruin in bed,
the nurse assures him of his importance
and, retching, takes his breakfast order.