a poem-a-long with amelia dale 😎

subbed in: did you mean bar or barn? (please say barn) ~literally a literary reading~ is happening at 7pm tonight! amelia dale is one of the v talented readers performing this eve and invites you to ‘poem-a-long’ with her when she reads (like a singalong, but with the poems). here’s her piece for you to follow :) see youse soon 💖 


From Precarious

For many voices. Each word should be voiced.

1.04

I hope, one day, employers realise blood circulates from the upper benefit of the systemic loop scrapping originating idea of a ‘casual’ employee. I worked the aortic arch, a contract position for the Federal Govt. last brachiocephalic artery and that was a breath of fresh air - it was nice for the left common carotid to wake up and know that I was actually going to go get the left subclavian artery to work, to the head and neck without the risk to the subclavian vein of someone calling me when I’m emptied of blood half-way there to say 'don’t bother, we don’t need you’, by the jugular vein.

1.05

I have been a casual brachiocephalic artery in one job or trunk for over 2 years with the first and largest artery varying days branches and hours per week and am temping to form the right common carotidartery at a couple of other places right and the subclavian artery which just gives me enough blood to the money to afford right upper chest right arm, to live in a house, neck, and head, and not the streets.

1.09

I was working in a casual job transporting ions and getting paid $20 per hour with no sick leave/annual leave from the brain to the blood. When they made me permanent my salary suddenly went up to $25 per hour blood return (plus sick/annual leave) for doing the same job. Blood from the brain and neck flows. Years later, the same company made me redundant and I was replaced by a casual within the cranium. I tried to fight it, via the internal jugular veins, but they cited 'operational reasons’ a continuation of the sigmoid sinuses because it was far cheaper for them to have a casual rather than a permanent employee doing the same job. The right and left external jugular veins drain.

1.15

I have just in the last 2 hours had another rejection for a entry level job that was on a contract basis. I wasn’t good enough in the interview. I have given up my rental house, lips, cheeks, my old car, tongue, hard palate, soft palate, and floor of the mouth and recently my mobile phone because I couldn’t afford to pay them anymore.I am giving away my dog tomorrow cause I can’t afford to feed us two sets of teeth both anymore. I am using a computer at the local library to look for more work called primary dentition, and stumbled onto this story but this final rejection has gutted me. Until 4 years ago or deciduous teeth, I had a career that I had for 16 years. I was a good worker and secondary dentition, who did unpaid overtime because I loved my job. A tooth is the toughest known substance in the body. I spent a year looking after my ill parents until they both passed away and exceeding bones haven’t been able to get back into the workforce since. My major crime in density and strength it appears the tooth enamel was to live in rural NSW. I would like to say good luck to those looking for work and thank you to everyone who lends great strength to the tooth structure has offered me advice and best wishes while I was searching the formation of a developing tooth for work.

1.16

I worked for the process of dentin formation as a casual, about the last six years of my working life and enamel formation as a library officer, although fully qualified as a librarian. I’ve been retired now for a number of years. The tooth breaks through my working hours were never the same the gum into the mouth from one fortnight to the next in a process called eruption. Occasionally, there would be slightly more regular hours if in early fetal development I was replacing someone, say, on sick leave and goes through six stages.

A tooth sits in a specialized socket. My usual experience was susceptible to stains from coffee and cigarette usage to hope the phone would ring at 7.00am, with an offer of a few hours work for that day. My working life was held in location by a periodontal ligament, totally erratic and spasmodic. There was no certainty financially at all, with the assistance of cementum.

It was extremely stressful.

Fortunately, I was on a Widow B pension, the white visible part of a tooth. Each fortnight I would have to ring Centrelink to let them know the rounded upper projections of the back teeth my earnings for the fortnight , so that they could adjust my pension down. The earnings are cusps from fortnight to fortnight varied the hard exterior each time. Sometimes there were no earnings.


Amelia Dale is an experimental writer and the 'author’ of METADATA (SOd Press), Tractosaur (troll thread) & Grumpy Cat 2 Reads Sanditon Chapter 2 (Gauss pdf). She is, with a.j. carruthers the poetry reviews editor of Southerly Journal, and is editing a pdf series of experimental poetry chapbooks with SOd Press.