Poems
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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. -
Concrete Country
By Elfie ShiosakiI stand on burial grounds
of interconnected freshwater wetlands, swamps and lakes
seasonally flooding cleansing
sheltering water birds, frogs, gilgies and turtles -
Every morning I am reborn
By Eloise GrillsEvery morning I am reborn, must reteach myself to function, must learn
Tiresome tasks that always need to be redone
That are in their doing unlearned and undone
Like Jesus dragging the stone from the door only to be required to attend tedious course after course on proper wound management -
Ghazal for Staying Safe
By Munira Tabassum Ahmedwhich is to say we prosper until we are not safe,
all of this, worth it even when we are not safe.
I ask where you are going, what roads bend aside -
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
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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 -
Childhood Beaches
By Mohammad AwadTackling waves,
Tussle, wrestle Mother Nature,
Floating on ocean's surface
To defy gods gravity, -
Still Life
By Stephen EdgarTame enough to venture and explore,
Gem-flecked with dew in the Bruny Island dawn,
Two wallabies, stock-still,
Look up and pause while feeding on the lawn. -
What the creek said
By Mike LaddThe creek chuckled
recalling me falling into it
aged four
throwing a stick -
love song & maroochy river
By Sam Quyên Huỳnhfootprints trail your red heels.
I follow you & we traverse
flatland’s wind-wrinkled skin. -
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 -
the light that bleeds
By Bebe Backhousetake me outside to the place we both knew so well
when i’d hold your hand while walking barefoot
even though the soil was littered with bindis
but i preferred the earth to know who i was -
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I Remember Dad
By Dave Clarkin response to ‘I Remember’ by Joe Brainard
I remember our family ritual of Friday night fish and chips.
I remember Dad pointing a strong finger at the chalkboard menu, his hunger piqued -
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 -
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: -
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.
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Where Love Blossomed
By Sachém Parkin-OwensConcrete is where love has blossomed.
The soil beneath my leaves devoid of life,
full of misconception and missed connection.
Full of self-reflections and misapprehensions. -
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,
