Poems
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Reading Between My Lines
By Dorothy PorterPlease, darling, please
read between my lines
I am a fabulous script -
the poem begins with a breathing reef
By Eunice Andradaa new cemetery blooms in the heat
we search for the last traces of colour -
Litany: An Elegy
By Mark TredinnickFor the children
Each tongue, it has been wisely said, speaks galaxies.
And when a language dies, a world—and all that has -
She-oaked shores
By Dakota FeirerSomewhere in between beginning and end, are shaded beds on sacred bends
Made in layers of leaves, resembling strands, or ancient, sacred ladies
Where sweet waters ebb, and soft northern winds blow
Faceless Maidens Bellow, my arms and Nawi follow -
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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. -
Tilt
By Kate LilleyFonzies Fantasyland at 31 Oxford St
(now a disappointing IGA)
opened in 1979, next door to Patches,
a few months after the Ghost Train fire -
Dust
By Anna Spargo-RyanThere is no water.
Outside the ground is dust.
A man takes the animals to another red-and-grey plot.
He watches their fleece rot. He watches the flies come. -
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: -
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Would, Could, Should
By Megan Wildingmy Sister would always tell me
that she loved my
Curly Hair
and -
Occupation
By Lisa GortonListen. We can talk here,
this republic in your empire of intention.
Know when you step out of this door again
corridors will take you -
Bahloo
By Evelyn Araluen~ For Aunty Gloria Matthews
bahloo
I am watching you watch me -
Nginha-gulia nyiang – These words
By Jeanine Leane~ Wiradjuri interpretations provided by Aunty Elaine Lomas
These words cry out and I hear them—learn to mould
and shape them like clay. -
Confetti by Dada
By Felicity Plunkett'a lie that I have FIXED like a butterfly on a hat’
(Tristan Tsara)
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Later, dusk
By Michelle CahillWalk slowly through the day,
take care of yourself, do not count on harm,
things lost are now a small waste to retrieve,
even the ocean is messy, let it teach you to trust -
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 -
The Astronomer
By Fiona WrightJust stars, and grassland –
to stand on the limit of the world
and then climb upwards.
Here is his tower, -
'One final word on the Christmas Island pipistrelle.
By Laura Jean McKayMarch. Zipped wings
your overnight bag.
No sonar nets
