peter jerrim

15 August 2024
15 January 2025
unsuccessfully submitted 15 January 2025 toward a one week residency at Varuna
rejected by Island Magazine (with encouraging comments by Kate Middleton) 1 June 2025
submitted for Best of Australian Poems 2025 17 June 2025

earnest is my enemy the fringe unlocks and beetling brow
and eyes, two for the price of one, for which has the greater worth?
and, as I had not yet blinked, you kissed me
thinking of unintended consequences

the rubber hits the road

a short graphic story to picture in your mind
in which Alice encounters a tyre waste particle
which she mistakenly attempts to eat
and Bob tries to stop her

…

intro: (Alice)
a one-cell wonder, that’s me
(a microalga)
smelling my inventory
messed in a turgid sea
of runoff, several
millimetres deep

intro: (Bob – gently ironic)
bogus cantos gesture (and self reflect)
so try this one on for size – a bogus
country, replete with precedents elect

think you look good in it? forget the whys
and where-ofs, the meme-betweens, consider
the integument of love and longing

every woke, every wake alike, the dream
in each machine that weaves and knits around
you – electrics strum your brain where certain

regions know you’re thinking, but what about
a billion brains, amplified by mega
threats, transcendent possibilities? let’s

name them, well, a few, well…one! on PubChem
thousands keep me occupied while socials
bark and whine and the rubber hits the road

Alice (in a ‘poetical’ voice)
blue lies
black rivers
tyres
turn
seas

Bob (breathless)
1-methyl-2-pentyl-cyclohexane, 1,3-diphenylguanidine, 2-mercaptobenzothiazole, 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,2-dihydroquinoline, 4-tert-octylphenol, 6PPD-quinone, aliphatic hydrocarbon resins, alkyl phenolic resins, aramid, aromatic oils (other), benzo[a]pyrene, benzothiazoles, bisphenol A, butyl rubber, cadmium, carbon black, cashew oil, castor oil, chromium, chrysene, cobalt, copper, cyclohexane, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, hexamethoxymethylmelamine, hydrogenated hydrocarbon resins, iron, isoprene rubber, lead, limonene, manganese, N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N'-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine, N-cyclohexyl-2-benzothiazole sulfenamide, N-isopropyl-N'-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine, naphthenic oils, natural rubber, nickel, nitrile rubber, nylon, paraffinic oils, phenanthrene, phenol-formaldehyde resin, polybutadiene rubber, polyester, polyisobutylene, pyrene, rubberised rayon, silica, soyabean oil, steel cord, styrene-butadiene rubber, sulfenamides, sulfur, zinc, zinc oxide…
2400 more, I could go on, thank god I don’t, they should be

 

Alice (says it straight)
green fantasies from
an eden
that never was
so
stream

Bob
Hameroff’s 2nd concerto for synth Oblivion ’n
slow right boggling down ’n
pay attention to yr night-n-day,
e.g. yr nth car now its tyres alone
when their rubber hits the road

graphic: map with charts
78% ocean microplastics shed (Pew Charitable Trust) annual microplastics into San Francisco Bay from stormwater 7 trillion particles (estimate), half being suspected tyre particles (Rebecca Sutton, San Francisco Estuary Institute)

see references/citations no longer @twp.bio

dude with curly hair and beetling brow yells into mic:
p’raps through this globe over a minimum 400 toxic chemicals from tyres plus the increased torque in electric vehicles meaning even 20% more evil on the road don’t you wanna

tunnel
a
tubular
furious
bell

hammered by derivative earth?

unofficial photo of author
I cannot now be taken back unmade (Jorie Graham, IT CANNOT BE, 2022)
into a tunnel not yet SWIVELLED from the earth by bots

 

unofficial photo of author
Each time a tyre rotates, it loses a layer of rubber about a billionth of a metre thick. (Dr Karl, HOW DANGEROUS IS RUBBER DUST, 2024)
into a tunnel the FUTURE irrevocable

 

dude
tyre wear particles / other particulate matter / negative heart, lung, developmental, reproductive, and cancer outcomes (Imperial College London) and that’s just us we, humans

a ship of fools with other hands could sail amok in but

just never made that connection…about where all these particles go (Hanson Cheng, Tyre Collective) [we] created a device which attaches to a car tyre…electrostatics and the airflow of a spinning wheel collect the tyre dust as it’s produced [then it’s] upcycled into a…different kind of rubber [with] a variety of applications. (Doloresz Katanich, euro news)

otherwise see Baensch-Baltruschat B, Kocher B, Stock F, Reifferscheid G. Tyre and road wear particles (TRWP) - A review of generation, properties, emissions, human health risk, ecotoxicity, and fate in the environment. Sci Total Environ. 2020 Sep 1;733:137823. don’t it make you wanna

slice
rounds
in
unsuspected
quantal
wounds?

and similar articles

Kole PJ, Löhr AJ, Van Belleghem FGAJ, Ragas AMJ. Wear and Tear of Tyres: A Stealthy Source of Microplastics in the Environment. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2017 Oct 20;14(10):1265.

image: T. S. Eliot, photographed one Sunday afternoon in 1923 by Lady Ottoline Morrell – may not be in the public domain
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (T.S. Eliot, THE WASTE LAND, 1922)
please imagine your own response

 

Urban ‘stormwater runoff during rain approximately 19 out of every 20 microplastics collected were tyre wear particles with anywhere from 2 to 59 particles per litre of water.’ Griffith University News and Analysis, 6 September 2023

pic: young scientist
in lab hazard gear
smiles radiantly before
samples
equipment

Pollution of our waterways by microplastics is an emerging environmental concern due to their persistence and accumulation in aquatic organisms and ecosystems. (Shima Ziajahromi et al, MICROPLASTICS AND TIRE WEAR PARTICLES IN URBAN STORMWATER: ABUNDANCE, CHARACTERISTICS, AND POTENTIAL MITIGATION STRATEGIES, 2023)