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. -
Dreaming Track
By Lorna MunroPlease disregard the disruptions
Disconnect from the obstructions
The growth of this canopy pleads
Unweave the wires that bind -
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. -
The Healing Tree
By Indira NaidooI watched you
Lost in grief
Head of stone and cloud,
Steps faltering -
Bahloo
By Evelyn Araluen~ For Aunty Gloria Matthews
bahloo
I am watching you watch me -
Nginha-gulia nyiang – These words
By Jeanine Leane~ Wiradjuri interpretations provided by Aunty Elaine Lomas
These words cry out and I hear them—learn to mould
and shape them like clay. -
sunlight and wind are free
By Ella O'Keefe, Dr Karl Kruszelnickisunlight and wind are free
a kind of ‘glue’
your loudspeaker simultaneously broadcasts
molten iron in precise quantities -
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’, -
Later, dusk
By Michelle CahillWalk slowly through the day,
take care of yourself, do not count on harm,
things lost are now a small waste to retrieve,
even the ocean is messy, let it teach you to trust -
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 -
(En)Joy rides in police cars
By Andrew GalanDad was certified dead Christmas day
septicaemia mixed by schizophrenia, alcohol, and restraint
in Long Bay maximum security psychiatric hospital
mum didn’t tell -
Postcards of Colonial Ghosting
By Sam Wagan Watson, Sigbjørn Skåden(1 of 3) Frost In the Ground
A reindeer herder stood on a beach and looked out to sea. It was springtime, her reindeer had come to this place to give birth. Up on the moors snow had begun to give way to open patches of moss, an archipelago of birth places, and from the sea a welcoming breeze came in, a forerunner of the season to come. As I walked … -
Assembly (The Modelled Forms)
By Judith Nangala CrispinListen to audio of Judith reading her poem here
There will be no forgiveness. Not for any of us who’ve come here— -
This difference exists
By Candy Royalle1.
all that makes us
sink beneath the
weight of simply -
The widest wide shot
By Briohny DoyleThe widest wide shot. Opens on the sick
bed
in my heart where you lie
convalescing in red. -
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Western Line
By Winnie DunnRooty Hill Station
Mum drops me off under
the moldy overpass -
The Astronomer
By Fiona WrightJust stars, and grassland –
to stand on the limit of the world
and then climb upwards.
Here is his tower, -
Tiny Roar
By Omar MusaSilken snapdragons, swaying on stalk tower,
open their mouths. The tiny roars of colour
— sherbet, red velvet, purple wine — bees waltz
in haloes around them, sever the thread from earth
