Poems
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Context in a Broken Duplex
By Omar Sakr“Tensions are escalating”. “Mow the grass down.”
Stretch past pain to find poetry, the way home.
Pen the past to find home. Write even the rain. -
Cat Food
By Krissy KeenOn the plane
I wrote a poem titled
The Generosity of Flesh.
It had a line about my armpit -
That Type of Blak Love
By Luke Currie-RichardsonI want that type of blak love
first foot on your traditional country
you just know
you belong -
TikTok Dance
By Maxine Beneba ClarkeDab, dab, shuffle, slide,
left, right, left.
Shuffle, slide, dab, dab,
twirl, kick, step. -
'One final word on the Christmas Island pipistrelle.
By Laura Jean McKayMarch. Zipped wings
your overnight bag.
No sonar nets -
We’re processing your direct debit
By Dan HoganThat's you in bokeh, hands leaking over a rail. It’s coldest in high
definition, loudest in standard. Trumpet like a mop along linoleum
before it’s too late (in 4K). Ice-cream didn’t do this. Ice-cream never
does anything. Stumble on the buff tree root lifting a segment -
River
By Hope One- Matehaere Hope Haami
I am the river, the river is me,
Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au -
Submission
By Peter GoldsworthyI accepted my first rejection slip
humbly. I took the next on the chin,
if with gritted teeth. The third
I balled, and threw four periods -
Glad wrap is death and everything is on fire
By Laurie MayI don't know how to write anymore
I don't write anymore
I'm not sure if writing has become a luxury
Falling wayside to practical things -
Dust
By Anna Spargo-RyanThere is no water.
Outside the ground is dust.
A man takes the animals to another red-and-grey plot.
He watches their fleece rot. He watches the flies come. -
Slavery
By PiO (π.ο.)40 million people worldwide in 2019 were subjected to
some kind of slavery, 61% of them were used in forced labor
25% of them children (mostly in the private sector), and
38% of them in forced marriages. -
Silent Verse
By Walter KadikiIn a land foreign
Here I stand
The uneasiness
And nervousness -
How to say goodbye
By Mary Anne ButlerPut the dog in the car just before sunset
pack her bowl and water
a bottle of bubbles
a champagne flute. -
Floorboards
By Evie WyldThe dog’s foot scratches on the wood
that the men put in
clay pipes in mouths,
their moustaches and hats. -
Found object
By Thuy OnI want someone I can turn into art
splice him into shapes
assemble him again:
slightly askew -
Empires of Mind
By Sarah Holland-BattBeside the fountain’s troupe of sun-bleached rubber ducks,
in the gardens, under a shade sail,
my father is crying about Winston Churchill.
Midway through a lunch of cremated schnitzel -
Denim
By Rohan C. KingIn a surgical cut to the heart of an op-shop, it finds me:
muted blues of a spring noon, its salt-scuffed
wash of wave-noise rolling from cuff
to elbow shoals—a great shroud -
Indexing
By John KinsellaIndexing The Land Selector’s Guide to the crown Lands
of Western Australia... ‘issued by direction of ... Commissioner
of Crown Lands’ in Perth By Authority of the Government Printer
1897... you might realise absence and sameness, that real estate
