Poems
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'One final word on the Christmas Island pipistrelle.
By Laura Jean McKayMarch. Zipped wings
your overnight bag.
No sonar nets -
How to stay afloat
By Kelly-Lee HickeyIt goes like this ;
you take some small part of yourself,
fashion it into a paper boat.
Be careful with the delicate folds, -
the poem begins with a breathing reef
By Eunice Andradaa new cemetery blooms in the heat
we search for the last traces of colour -
Rimbaud in Africa
By Bella LiI am sending you a bird’s head in a steel box filled with alcohol. I believe this
bird is unique to the Harar area; it is known here as koumou.Perhaps you
saw it when you were here. It is the size of a large turkey, and is completely
black. -
The Healing Tree
By Indira NaidooI watched you
Lost in grief
Head of stone and cloud,
Steps faltering -
so too the sunrise
By Jazz Moneyso too the sunrise
with clarity and promise
of who you will rise to be
so too the breaking night -
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I Grew Up A Shadow Girl, With A Man Outlined Inside Me
By Madison Godfrey(Content warning: references self-harm)
When I was fifteen in a toilet cubicle next to Talia,
I exclaimed IT’S HERE with my school skirt skimming -
Reading Between My Lines
By Dorothy PorterPlease, darling, please
read between my lines
I am a fabulous script -
Entanglement
By Toby FitchI am watching myself untangle
my earphones, my body’s walk paused,
standing on the corner of Bedford and Probert
beneath mini grotesques on the roof -
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, -
on contemplating 70kms of coastline
By Scott-Patrick MitchellNote: This poem is best read in .pdf format. Click the link below to open an accessible .pdf.
you, so brackish in being: still
do not look at this as space -
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HOME
By Sara M. SalehI still write to you at times.
I try to make sense
of all your corners, all your years
tucked underneath loss and loss, -
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. -
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 -
War and Peace
By Maria TumarkinWho knew war would be the time of neologisms,
so linguistically fertile.
(Specify which war. You’re in Australia.)
On Russian TV the topdog propagandist coins ‘to macron’, -
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 -
Things to do (Heart)
By Jordie Albistona. Find heart, and place hand upon it. b. Time
to metronome beat. c. Empty above of all
things earthly. d. Fill with compassion. e. Sleep. f.
Remove heart while comatose, and g. wrap -
Cradle of Life
By Archie RoachI go down to the ocean
Here on the sand
Ah my heart is broken
As here I stand
