Poems
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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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love song & maroochy river
By Sam Quyên Huỳnhfootprints trail your red heels.
I follow you & we traverse
flatland’s wind-wrinkled skin. -
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. -
Train Meditation
By Robyn LambirdMy favorite time of day is spent on the train.
Meditation and contemplation, a grasp for meaning.
No task at hand, the world blurs past in my peripherals and I consider how to turn the pain in my hips into a sensation worth having? More importantly, what to have for dinner?
Surrounded by bodies, I dive deeper into myself. -
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— -
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: -
she marries her
By Sandra Renewshe asks her for her hand to marry
after five years of not holy espousal nuptial
but partnership in civility let’s do it honey
promising to waste no time -
Birthright
By DENNIThey make you wanna forget your birthright
Your integrity
To fight
A war -
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 -
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 -
What the creek said
By Mike LaddThe creek chuckled
recalling me falling into it
aged four
throwing a stick -
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. -
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, -
Dead Giveaway
By Dan HoganFeast your eyes on the lung candy
as it whips through the air at a speed
marvellous save for the foul accents
protruding less in plumes and more in -
Phalanx (Woman's Work)
By Daniel BrowningThey talk of blak matriarchy
I feel it every day
The only blak matriarchs I know
Would refuse that title -
Silence
By Huda the GoddessFive things I have learnt about the earth in the middle of worldly chaos
The ocean is the best place to be humbled and reminded of how even the calmest things can be dangerous in the most beautiful way.
Earth is the same colour as my first love’s eyes and whenever I miss him I find a space with pure sand and dig my feet so I know what it’s like to … -
Literature
By Damon Young1. The Green Room
‘Reading is a moral force.’ – novelist
known for writing -
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.
