Poems
-
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 -
0870
By Hugh WinterfloodShe’s a quiet wee thing, though her temper's often flaring,
swearing and carrying on through the night,
she stays in the middle and many lost wanderers, come to her
to offer themselves to her bodice and consume her life, -
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, -
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— -
Mundine, bleaching cream
By Andrew CoxI was 9 years old when Anthony Mundine beat Danny Green
The first time i remember seeing a brown person on TV
Saw a brown person win something
-
Makes You Stronger
By Nina OyamaA man once showed me around a sharehouse
and whenever he showed me a bad part he said
but hey, makes you stronger.
So the sink pipes are rotten. But hey, makes you stronger. -
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 -
Cradle of Life
By Archie RoachI go down to the ocean
Here on the sand
Ah my heart is broken
As here I stand -
For Nokutela Dube, who travelled
By Sisonke MsimangI was listening to a nice white lady celebrating the Australian elections
and she said how proud Australian women should be that they got the vote in 1902.
I corrected her and said
White women -
Childhood Beaches
By Mohammad AwadTackling waves,
Tussle, wrestle Mother Nature,
Floating on ocean's surface
To defy gods gravity, -
What the creek said
By Mike LaddThe creek chuckled
recalling me falling into it
aged four
throwing a stick -
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 -
Post-Credits Scene
By Dan HoganYour face raised dollar signs for eyes. An open
smile and protruding tongue styled after a banknote. Should
we stay till the end? A sausage roll like the credits roll. Sorry -
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 -
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.
-
-
Birthright
By DENNIThey make you wanna forget your birthright
Your integrity
To fight
A war -
winter faeries
By Jamie Marina LauBecause the behaviour of salt imitates memory, the coffee grinds of lovers, the spines of armadillos,
Salt takes poetry from your tongue by arching it, and holds it there to extract you. Salt splits itself molecularly to be tasted.
I’ve found a way to make language a ‘concentrating pool’, that is, in essence, an industrial sea: -
Denatured Spirits
By Dan HoganThe python’s morning nap was rudely interrupted
when my body looked like his body interrupted
Hogan was brought into custody
charged when caravan park resident -
The koala and the cyclist
By Steven HerrickLast night on the television news,
I saw a koala crawl through a burnt forest
and sit on the side of a road
where a group of cyclists were resting.
