Poems
-
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 -
Things Overheard in a Dream, 12th April 2001
By Peter Boyle“Take me to the black woods mumma
and make believe we’ll boogy in the dark.”
In the late summer of anxiety -
Howzat
By Alan Wearnefor Chris Pettett
Caughtbowledstumpedrunoutlegbefore!
Filmed with floosies in the raw, -
Bats
By John TranterIn a freezing attic somewhere in Prague
a hungry songwriter invents Sincerity, but alas,
too early. A decade later, a popular singer,
struck by the intimacy a microphone fakes, -
The Argument
By Sam LangerIt is windy out there. Back
home an argument continues.
We could be swimming, eating,
going for a walk, pointing -
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. -
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 -
The Fan
By Craig BillinghamAre you a fan? the woman said
and then sat down.
I didn't know what she meant –
I imagined she was famous. -
Holiday
By Caitlin MalingPerth from above is a cockroach
It sits there, brown and laconic, and
The micrwave of summer can't shift it.
With its suburbs, like legs, twitching intermittently. -
Lurker
By David Prateri know where you're from & why you're here
doing your 'research', just 'keeping tabs' etc.
my stats reveal your browsing habits & what
brought you here, five seconds ago - cached -
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 -
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 -
Capital Limp
By Tom LeeIn the smooth
Drains they emerge
And in the sun, they put
His cars, and his houses, they -
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 -
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 – -
Entrances North
By Fiona HileThe surf club car park is littered with empty
Muscle-testing image in the drum roll
tableau of sheets stripped of servitude. ‘Isn’t
there just a tiny bit of gravity in outer space?’ -
3am
By Andy KissaneAlong High Street, the window in the white Cortina
right down, the air rushing in, my foot on the accelerator
beating time to the electric fizz of Johnny B. Goode,
-
Notes on the River 8
By Adam AitkenVoilà! Slums levelled, wharves, boat ramps,
central planning.
-
Sugar
By Kevin Hart(an excerpt)
As warm air sips huge clouds
That fade all afternoon
In Africas of light,
