Poems
-
The Disappearing Suite
By Kim Cheng BoeyThey hover on the edges, their voices haunting
the blue hour when the tide of memory recedes
and forgetfulness returns, washing over the ash-prints
of their passing, so faint, yet so fresh you can’t tell -
The Dig Tree
By Anna Kerdijk NicholsonSitting in a veil and goggles against the flies
Wills writes ‘Dear Father, Cooper’s Creek is like’
and names an English stream. Looks at gnaw marks
of rats in his belt, saddle, even his drawers, -
YILAALU –BU-GADI (once upon a time in the bay of Gadi)
By Lorna MunroMELLALUCA
YURALI (eucalyptus)
PAPERBARK
KURRIJONG -
St. Kilda
By Ali AlizadehGhosts bristle from the grimy
grout of cobbles and tiles. Foot
-paths, the Ouija board. Feet
pulled by forces to trace, decrypt -
The Prospect of the Highland Dusk to Dawn
By Michael SharkeyHow the light, for instance, takes its leave
of silky darkness that moves in on padded feet
below the hills: the moon through cloud’s
an aspirin tablet in a glass of water, -
Good Blood
By Sandra ThibodeauxButcher’s blood ran through his family.
A Great War was on, and a war
needs meat. Vestey sharpened his knives
in Darwin, buying favours, enlisting workers -
Along Terrigal Beach
By Brian PurcellNeeding more cash to get the fish
I walk via the beach
dark cloud, fat drops of rain
seagulls and some hooded terns -
Spirit Remains
By Lorna MunroI am as old as time
I am fluid like spoken rhyme
I am still here, even if you refuse to listen to my lesson
I am wise beyond my years, though I wear the clothes of an adolescent -
Harvester
By Isi UnikowskiThe car’s dorsal wave carves off
a place neither here nor there, the highway’s
undertow drags at the details:
threshed from their commerce, tricked -
The Ballad of Bubble & Squeak
By Michael Farrellbubble pops up in the living
room: shes been asleep for about
a week. where is squeak? where
is the sandwich she keeps by -
Happy Wagga
By John Muk Muk Burkean overview
We’re happy—right?
survey says so.
Flowered parks, -
Temple relics
By Jena WoodhouseThe banners of red-painted wood
are worm-eaten. Some of the characters
have been effaced:
'The God's might is clear and grand, -
gulp
By joanne burnsfish and chips on the pier
at watson’s bay, or is it
calamari – something we
never ate in the 50s un- -
Great Lake Miena
By Bronwyn Langwind lays light
across the surface
fish skip concentric ripples
clopping their response -
The Boy of the Lunar Grapefruits
By Joel Ephraims…A short film script dreamt in poetic reverie
While reading Federico Garcia Lorca’s
‘In the Garden of the Lunar Grapefruits’
In its Penguin Classics English translation -
The Royal Treatment
By Helen RamoutsakiI: The Burning 1931
Way back when, February, a muddied lane:
the flare of a gas lamp by papers
igniting as the lounge lights up -
Croc Dreaming
By Julie MacleanAll night freight trains roar in,
whirl about my galleon, sails billowing,
spiky shadows of palm fronds casting
all about like Bunyip’s claws -
A town from land John Oxley said would never be inhabited by civilised men
By Lorne JohnsonWe were returning from
long days in thinning mallee
where we persued red-lored whistlers,
grey falcons and malleefowl, -
Flemington to Flinders Station #59
By Philip Salomin daylight the tram lines incised in concrete
seen bare as a dam wall without the elegant
curvatures of wall or flats of blue water the
weight of wanting or wait towards an empty -
North Reef, QLD
By Scott ThouardBefore teenage ambivalence
we'd time the change of tides
and start across a briar of shells
high stepping the welching sand.
