Poems
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Every morning I am reborn
By Eloise GrillsEvery morning I am reborn, must reteach myself to function, must learn
Tiresome tasks that always need to be redone
That are in their doing unlearned and undone
Like Jesus dragging the stone from the door only to be required to attend tedious course after course on proper wound management -
There’s no disabled girls with style like mine
By Esther OttawayA woman wearing makeup must be fine.
They tell me there is nothing wrong with you.
Disabled girls cannot have style like mine.
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What fangs out of the bracken with a head full of garden?
By Dan HoganSummer equals cicadascream plus other superimpositions
hung in the air like an idea of bunting but never the worsted
wool. I’m no mathematician but who is? Nobody in this poor
excuse for a nondescript prism hurtling birthdaytowardbirthday -
What the creek said
By Mike LaddThe creek chuckled
recalling me falling into it
aged four
throwing a stick -
Still Life
By Stephen EdgarTame enough to venture and explore,
Gem-flecked with dew in the Bruny Island dawn,
Two wallabies, stock-still,
Look up and pause while feeding on the lawn. -
Silence
By Huda the GoddessFive things I have learnt about the earth in the middle of worldly chaos
The ocean is the best place to be humbled and reminded of how even the calmest things can be dangerous in the most beautiful way.
Earth is the same colour as my first love’s eyes and whenever I miss him I find a space with pure sand and dig my feet so I know what it’s like to … -
Childhood Beaches
By Mohammad AwadTackling waves,
Tussle, wrestle Mother Nature,
Floating on ocean's surface
To defy gods gravity, -
Where Love Blossomed
By Sachém Parkin-OwensConcrete is where love has blossomed.
The soil beneath my leaves devoid of life,
full of misconception and missed connection.
Full of self-reflections and misapprehensions. -
I Remember Dad
By Dave Clarkin response to ‘I Remember’ by Joe Brainard
I remember our family ritual of Friday night fish and chips.
I remember Dad pointing a strong finger at the chalkboard menu, his hunger piqued -
Literature
By Damon Young1. The Green Room
‘Reading is a moral force.’ – novelist
known for writing -
Elegy with the Incredulity of Saint Thomas
By Gavin Yuan GaoLast night, my grandfather came back from the grave
wearing the tailor-made Mao suit he was buried in.
The grasses between us swayed in their crisis
of faith. Under the mulberry tree’s ceaseless sighing -
types of beach sand
By Scott-Patrick Mitchelli. soft sand
is hard to walk on. gives out either way. wind carves inhalation into scrub. dune’s breath collapsing. beneath feet, drift’s weep. see how tangling melaleuca scribbles what was, sedge clings to ledge. when we talk about the tide reclaiming, we forget how far it hungers. where once a ridge, absence. take off shoes: let erosion carry you… -
Birthright
By DENNIThey make you wanna forget your birthright
Your integrity
To fight
A war -
Ghazal for Staying Safe
By Munira Tabassum Ahmedwhich is to say we prosper until we are not safe,
all of this, worth it even when we are not safe.
I ask where you are going, what roads bend aside -
Olympic Hour
By Bronte CampbellThe lotus flower
Lurks in murk and mud and dark
Biding time, keeping count
‘Til it bursts forth in light and bright and colour -
Stand
By Rachael MeadTwo years I’ve lived as if in a cul-de-sac,
a flat sun bathing me in cold blue glare,
my griefs orbiting like silt-faced moons.
Yet in dreams, I soar with bar-tailed godwits, -
Concrete Country
By Elfie ShiosakiI stand on burial grounds
of interconnected freshwater wetlands, swamps and lakes
seasonally flooding cleansing
sheltering water birds, frogs, gilgies and turtles -
War and Peace
By Maria TumarkinWho knew war would be the time of neologisms,
so linguistically fertile.
(Specify which war. You’re in Australia.)
On Russian TV the topdog propagandist coins ‘to macron’, -
Train Meditation
By Robyn LambirdMy favorite time of day is spent on the train.
Meditation and contemplation, a grasp for meaning.
No task at hand, the world blurs past in my peripherals and I consider how to turn the pain in my hips into a sensation worth having? More importantly, what to have for dinner?
Surrounded by bodies, I dive deeper into myself. -
Identity
By DOBBY, SlinCrazeGenerations of trauma, trickling through the leak
Eighty thousand years are fighting every week
Now’s the final hour, the world awaits your change,
yet you grip tightly the chains, and flick right through our pain
