Poems
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Elementary Chinese
By Eileen ChongFire hung on a nail makes a lamp,
two moons make a friend.
A thing that is not bark makes a glass,
two trees, a wood; three trees, a forest. -
Moon on a Stick
By Rob Wilsonfor J.L.D.
Try not to breathe.
Try not to walk the highwire too fast -
PHAEDRA HANGS OUT THE WASHING
By Kit Brookmanthe beauty of boys
in a morning-frost, white
skin running between white
sheets snagged by wooden -
satisfaction
By Benjamin DoddsHolding taut barbed-wire with one hand
and myself with the other
I gaze at the ground
as hundreds of shining grey dust droplets -
Capital Limp
By Tom LeeIn the smooth
Drains they emerge
And in the sun, they put
His cars, and his houses, they -
Howzat
By Alan Wearnefor Chris Pettett
Caughtbowledstumpedrunoutlegbefore!
Filmed with floosies in the raw, -
Holden HQ Wreck is Summers End
By Duncan Hosethe blue HQ @ Clifton Hill
like a warrior yes an octogenarian KRISNA
who’s dragged himself ashore from the river
tacho. punched in the dash, pink-drugged carpet -
Birds of Paradise
By Joel ScottLilac eruptions move upwards and
I can't help but think of us. This
is untraceable. Like moving backwards
by words in a phrase. On the return leg, -
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Substance (of things hoped for)
By Paul MitchellCars wait in traffic because they want to.
Tomorrow never comes, thank god.
Cakes start with icing and get better, -
The Bird
By Anthea StefanidisOn the worst days I try on the bird.
I have constructed of lost feathers.
Saturated and dripping its pungent mysteries
into my ears I become a bird in a tree on a mountain of brambles. -
Crush
By Kate LilleyWhen I say that history was my favourite
I’m thinking less of the Weimar Republic
or the militarisation of Japan
than Miss R’s contralto discipline -
View from Hvolsvelli
By Corey WakelingThe frozen and the liquid. All its dialogue
in one white plume and one grey plume.
The corrugated vanity across Eyjafjallajökull's
mid-section is not rain-bearing cloud, but the old -
The Argument
By Sam LangerIt is windy out there. Back
home an argument continues.
We could be swimming, eating,
going for a walk, pointing -
Crossing the Hay Plains at Sunrise
By David Falconsky so coppery i can taste pennies
low lit by the sun
the plain stretches its rough gorse
to the edge of the world -
Distractions
By Liam FerneyI am hoping to kick a Facebook habit
but the monsters are scary and tomorrow
is too long to wait for an anxiety
as toxic as a tax the punters don't understand -
Sleight of Hand
By Emily BittoThese are messages written in dirt
and rubbed away with a quick boot-sole –
even then, the fear of the trace,
the unerasable, the archive that cannot be destroyed – -
A Prayerflag from Dharamsala
By Michelle CahillI am dancing tonight in the Kangra valley.
Effigies of the demon king Ravan are ablaze
for Dussehra. Thorn bush dissipates in a flare.
