Poems
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The Stairs
By Jill JonesThe house is white, that I remember, plain graceful,
and ungainly, the missing colonnade, they say
everything has been replaced, it’s all as if — we’re guessing
about a stuffed penguin, a copy of The Edinburgh Review 1829. -
View of a Library
By Geoff PageA cold wind from the August ranges.
Seen from here exactly
the Brindabellas seem to join
the Library’s line of Grecian columns — -
Sydney Refracted
By Peter Lach-NewinskySkyscraper shells ebb & flow waves of light
crystallized from some radioactive jelly ball white
in oceanic space, glint down into viridescent caverns
shadowed with sharks, protean projections -
The Valley
By Zoe DzunkoNow that we have mapped the Ocean it is just so much more
difficult for the boats to disappear. Even so, our phones died
in tandem that first night, we smashed the bottle neck open
against the sun spoiled steel of the barge. And the wine poured -
60, Tapestry’d sitting room, mint glass vase and bracken spray.
By Astrid LorangeFor you, LL. No need to even mention the category of the
husband. The oil lamps are dim, but you can still read everything.
Even if you had a hundred sons, they’d all be unionists. We take great
comfort for this. Postwar, no one will notice you if you wash in -
The Prospect of the Highland Dusk to Dawn
By Michael SharkeyHow the light, for instance, takes its leave
of silky darkness that moves in on padded feet
below the hills: the moon through cloud’s
an aspirin tablet in a glass of water, -
Nymphs
By C. M. Chadwickfrozen in row
but then crackle skin
peel of giggles
and slip off slip slop slip shod -
Harvester
By Isi UnikowskiThe car’s dorsal wave carves off
a place neither here nor there, the highway’s
undertow drags at the details:
threshed from their commerce, tricked -
St. Kilda
By Ali AlizadehGhosts bristle from the grimy
grout of cobbles and tiles. Foot
-paths, the Ouija board. Feet
pulled by forces to trace, decrypt -
Sky
By Martin HarrisonIt’s taken a very long while to work out what the disturbing feature is in the photo collection of mostly petty criminals in the Justice and Police Museum collection. It still strikes me as a largely inexplicable feature, where I’m searching for words to describe what could be called a type of “pointlessness” in the images. Such a term obviously… -
offset
By JacksonThey tried to regrow the forest.
Met on alternate Saturdays
with baby trees in tubes,
buckets, plastic tree-guards. -
Golden Summer, Eaglemont
By Kate Middletonafter Arthur Streeton
Late afternoon amber falls across house
and far-off mountains, while shadow
forms a new perimeter. The human body -
Croc Dreaming
By Julie MacleanAll night freight trains roar in,
whirl about my galleon, sails billowing,
spiky shadows of palm fronds casting
all about like Bunyip’s claws -
Diminuendo
By Sue FieldingFrom the top of the range
it falls-
like afternoon shadow.
Imperceptible, -
The Boy of the Lunar Grapefruits
By Joel Ephraims…A short film script dreamt in poetic reverie
While reading Federico Garcia Lorca’s
‘In the Garden of the Lunar Grapefruits’
In its Penguin Classics English translation -
Going Under
By Jaime ShieldsSmoke nails us to the ground keeps us low
and our washing wet
From down here the gaol lights are in the top right hand corner of every picture
the southerly doesn’t care -
Silvery
By Astrid Lorangeable rustbelt in three thousand pixels
when a faultline two-month billboard
maxes out, flags up, snags concern
and shells maple in a non-televised -
apere amp— (utation)
By Michael GiacomettiIf a tree falls in terest …
an old caterpillar man dies.
Before I died I woke up
screaming. I was dreaming, -
Now
By Stuart CookeThis is the place: a park, a cleared space, cooling swathes of light.
In the distance: an airport’s absurdity,
arguments of steel, flocks of fruit bats swarming
in panic across an afternoon sky. -
Steyne Hotel - Manly
By Tim HeffernanIt is winter, yet
ice cream coned people
stroll along the promenade.
Out to sea
