Poems
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Flood Watch
By Mark RobertsUp the hill,
safe on a concrete path.
But the rain continues &
I almost lose my footing -
Flemington to Flinders Station #59
By Philip Salomin daylight the tram lines incised in concrete
seen bare as a dam wall without the elegant
curvatures of wall or flats of blue water the
weight of wanting or wait towards an empty -
Missing Persons
By Adam AitkenFrom Tokyo to the Gold Coast they’d come. They were in the
papers, instant scoop, apologising, and on the box. In the
lunch break we talked about the old theory and clichés: why
the Japanese don't travel well, how foreign ways corrupt, why -
A town from land John Oxley said would never be inhabited by civilised men
By Lorne JohnsonWe were returning from
long days in thinning mallee
where we persued red-lored whistlers,
grey falcons and malleefowl, -
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 -
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 -
No Clock
By Matt NormanLight carries between floorboards,
I follow it; trace a line back to my eyes
And the creases beneath them.
This building has no plaque -
Potts Point Redevelopment (1871 fixer upper)
By Sarah AttfieldOnly takes minutes for history to be bulldozed
plenty of those minutes have been found in this city
Who wants grand houses, relics of a wished they were gentry anyway?
glass and concrete doesn’t need stonemasons, artisans, chimney sweeps -
Go to be lost to others, overwhelmed/ By bones and light and themselves…*
By Juan Garrido-SalgadoThere are lights that will never burn out
Until they make bodies and dust
In our hearts and hands.
Hay luces que no se apagaran jamás -
Dripping with Decadence (Big House, big white lies)
By Lorna MunroBig house, big lies, gubbna, white gubbament
Contorted melaleuca
Conveniently furnished with secondhand decadence
Will society ever speak of the secret deals that were made? -
Two Songs
By Martin Harrison1. “If I could turn back time I would”
Is there anyone who won’t judge me
for what I’ve done? It’s so like God
to do this to me. I’m turned into -
Gethsemane at the Bowl
By Cathy Altmann(after the monoprint by Michael Donnelly)
Stars empty themselves –
no show tonight.
The Bowl opens its mouth -
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… -
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 -
A1 Bakery
By Luke BeesleyAssembled incidents – no sadness. Nothing as obvious. The word collect-
ion. A collection of poems (grief) the clipped organisation in the word and
working to define it, I sit down. The television is reflected in the capsicum.
A table over, a woman blushes opposite her sister. Unmistakable. -
The Rain of Bodies
By Anne M. CarsonPods of gangangs hurl sleek grey bodies
into a receptive sky. They surf, rising and dipping,
catching air-current waves in sets from ridge
to ridge. Red-capped males lead. Querulous calls -
Kati Thanda/Lake Eyre
By Rachael MeadThere’s nothing there, no horizon
water and sky melded, seamless.
From solidity the ground begins to give
and we crack through crust, -
You can see
By Coral Carter"you can see forever she said—we sat in camp chairs over looking cretaceous paleo channels—exist still from time when land masses pulled back—cracked and broke—rainforests quaked wet—mountains smashed up— blades of water carved new beds—and mammals were set to rule
above us jezebels did the butterfly polka from native pine to native pine—layin… -
Groove
By Bruce PascoeAt some point
he must have lifted his head,
looked back at the axe
in his hand, -
Charlotte Street
By John HawkeThe pavement is a narrow procession
of footsteps returning home in darkness.
There is a raw gas-smell past Island Street,
the rancidness of lamb-fat that clings
