Poems
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Emerald City
By Aden RolfeEveryone knows the story: boy meets bay, sets up
colony, steals country. Now the waterfront sets are
brighter than ever, bolstered by breakfast radio &
cameo bridge views / while backstage the Cooks River -
This City
By Celestine RoweI love this city
Creativeness, words, they flow
From the gutters to the tips of high rise buildings
Artistic alleyways -
Wiped
By Sam Wagan WatsonFor Martin Harrison
“I sing the joy of wandering
and the pleasure of the wandering death …”
Guillaume Apollinaire -
Damaged Glamour
By Aden Rolfe‘Why didn’t life turn out the way it looked
in Cronulla in 1967?’ Or at least
how it does in a Go-Betweens film clip?
On the streets of this town no one cares where -
Redwood Plantation, Otways National Park
By Melody PalomaPoem after Jennifer Rankin
Things seem cut up here, clipped up in straight lines, divided on/by the
ground: -
Unnamed
By Celestine RowePower to the struggle, whatever that may be
Whatever you’re feeling, rise higher
Give it all you got ‘cause you’re stronger
No matter what life throws at ya -
Moongalba
By Judith RodriguezPlace holds the people. They wander, making a life – place is inside them,
staking its claims, reserving its treasures.
What place? Maybe the space by a mother, between her bed and the wall. Or the backyards of a childhood. It may be an endless plain with its secrets for living.
For Oodgeroo, the green island in the se… -
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. -
Last Drinks
By Aden Rolfe‘Your vocation calls
& you answer it’
John Forbes, ‘Pacific’
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shoot
By Renee Pettitt-SchippI will not close I will not let
so much as one petal curl
as long as this light can reach me.
So long as the clear -
Names
By Judith RodriguezAmity
A ship under sail: a sighting: a sandy beach
offers its point to the neighbour island, offers
a watering place. A safe station, on the way -
Untitled
By Celestine RoweWe rose up from the darkness, where they kept us all along
We shine bright, smiling, never letting go of what could become
The vision held inside, we grab them tight
The dream even though it seemed for ever to become real -
The Dark Clearing
By Judith RodriguezHere is the shady clearing
of honour and farewell,
here the Noonuccal, neighbours,
and visitors off the ferry. -
Old Ghost Dogs
By Sam Wagan Watson“Some things are beyond talking.
Not the mind, not emotions,
words will always come for them.
Perhaps the mind lives in this barrier -
From The Other Side
By Judith RodriguezThe dead do not stay dead. There’s your Dad
teaching kids still in the voice of Oodgeroo;
for punishment, putting the kids on cut and dried
mission rations – that’s unsurprising news -
Ballad at Manifold's
By Judith RodriguezI remember you, Kath, the quiet woman
sat with Kate on a bench at Manifolds’:
our mandolines. Those Saturdays, the Wynnum
river-flats, a hawk circling, the ballads scored -
Fitzroy Commission Flats
By Melody PalomaPoem after Jennifer Rankin
can’t catch how the light hits the flats, at seven PM in early summer,
my iPhone camera never gets it right:
bedroom wall cracked open -
Snow Like Wool, Frost Like Ashes
By Jakob ZigurasFor Stanisław Barańczak
Snow is false purity.
—J.W. von Goethe -
Maya Angelou
By Abe NoukThe world is a mixture of everybody, everywhere
and she was a child and shall remain so
in the eyes of those who came before her
it matters not where from to make us feel -
Silvereye
By Renee Pettitt-Schippunblinking eye
looking out toward forever
the birdbath is reflective
high on stand