Poems
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Things Overheard in a Dream, 12th April 2001
By Peter Boyle“Take me to the black woods mumma
and make believe we’ll boogy in the dark.”
In the late summer of anxiety -
Sleight of Hand
By Emily BittoThese are messages written in dirt
and rubbed away with a quick boot-sole –
even then, the fear of the trace,
the unerasable, the archive that cannot be destroyed – -
Elementary Chinese
By Eileen ChongFire hung on a nail makes a lamp,
two moons make a friend.
A thing that is not bark makes a glass,
two trees, a wood; three trees, a forest. -
View from Hvolsvelli
By Corey WakelingThe frozen and the liquid. All its dialogue
in one white plume and one grey plume.
The corrugated vanity across Eyjafjallajökull's
mid-section is not rain-bearing cloud, but the old -
Holden HQ Wreck is Summers End
By Duncan Hosethe blue HQ @ Clifton Hill
like a warrior yes an octogenarian KRISNA
who’s dragged himself ashore from the river
tacho. punched in the dash, pink-drugged carpet -
Holiday
By Caitlin MalingPerth from above is a cockroach
It sits there, brown and laconic, and
The micrwave of summer can't shift it.
With its suburbs, like legs, twitching intermittently. -
Bats
By John TranterIn a freezing attic somewhere in Prague
a hungry songwriter invents Sincerity, but alas,
too early. A decade later, a popular singer,
struck by the intimacy a microphone fakes, -
Crush
By Kate LilleyWhen I say that history was my favourite
I’m thinking less of the Weimar Republic
or the militarisation of Japan
than Miss R’s contralto discipline -
Notes on the River 8
By Adam AitkenVoilà! Slums levelled, wharves, boat ramps,
central planning.
-
Entrances North
By Fiona HileThe surf club car park is littered with empty
Muscle-testing image in the drum roll
tableau of sheets stripped of servitude. ‘Isn’t
there just a tiny bit of gravity in outer space?’ -
-
Supreme Abyss
By Michelle LeberIn the voice of Su Nu, courtesan of
The Yellow Emperor of China
At night, snowfall uncovers -
Substance (of things hoped for)
By Paul MitchellCars wait in traffic because they want to.
Tomorrow never comes, thank god.
Cakes start with icing and get better, -
The Fan
By Craig BillinghamAre you a fan? the woman said
and then sat down.
I didn't know what she meant –
I imagined she was famous. -
X-2 Flare
By Bronwyn LangSpring Racing Carnival
wet streets: bright slick reflexive
-
several matters
By Derek Motionwater to watermark gap, canvas of the tree,
about two feet. toaster’s increased browning
capacity, a result of past usage. so clever.
i have frittered away my time. -
spanish fiction 2
By Michael Farrellwe were playing a mind game. but there
was a real
attraction. he was bookish,
unsuccessful; my secret -
CLOSING TIME
By Sam MorleyI am closing my eyes, because I can’t see it in the dusk,
the poem that is already there.
I am hearing the closing time bickering of noisy miners -
Birds of Paradise
By Joel ScottLilac eruptions move upwards and
I can't help but think of us. This
is untraceable. Like moving backwards
by words in a phrase. On the return leg,
