Poems
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An Old Farmer Remembers His Dog
By Judith BeveridgeThe ewes are rattled; they bleat as if the wind gusting around their ears
were the hard panted breath of mustering kelpies. Last summer,
Cheroot, my best dog was struck by a king brown on Wydah Hill.
I thought he must have lapped from a fetid ditch, for a while -
Breadfruit
By Sela Ahosivi-AtiolaThe sun welds itself to Sunnyholt Road,
lights blur into liquid over the asphalt car park of Parklea Market.
Cars idle, engines hum with their mouths half open,
traffic horns bleed into the thick murmur of chatter. -
Learning Arabic
By Misbah WolfThe djinn lived in an onyx ring.
At the mosque
a man stood
with a whiteboard and a pen -
For the Machines
By Alan FyfeDoors closing. Going up. First floor, residential and quietly religious. Second floor, haberdashery and implication. Sorry, we don’t know each other – my name is Sylvia. Third floor, gardening supplies and six million empty coats. It was my fourth acting gig in thirty-seven months. Greasy little studio with the walls sweating grief. Outstanding pl… -
rat patootie
By lotus threads, Panda Wong, Hannah WuO symphony of crackle
lil rat dominatrix tell me
what to do pull my hair
with yr tender paw mincemeat -
Discretion and ambiguity
By Jacqui MalinsIt doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Not representation nor avatar. No hint of face or figure. No vase of flowers. Shapes and lines arranged in space, proximate or distant. Dynamic symmetry. A straw-yellow rectangle floats low on a field of Barraba blue. Shapes and lines. A painting replicated on screen, a beguiling simplicity. Shapes and lines… -
A HAUNTOLOGY OF TRACES
By Ellen van NeervenSit but don’t
sit. Live but don’t
live. This is beyond discomfort
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The Job
By Janiru LiyanageYou go your whole life believing
dying is the easy part, then one day
your great aunt gets a brain tumour the size of a
kumquat burrowing inside her hippocampus, and -
Watermark
By Kristen Langfor David B
4am, he wakes, reaching out –
mountains, chiselled valleys, a small
sea between us – to say he is thinking -
Muriyira Dreaming
By Elizabeth Luland'Muriyira Dreaming' written and performed by Elizabeth Luland. Videography by Tad Souden and sound by Syd Green.
garuga-ngayawanj muriyira lore
mudjingaal ceremony has begun
ngarawan barra barra warmth -
Temple
By Liam FerneyYour God, why is he of war?
Memed blessed bombs bloom.
Where is mercy in this?
Button warriors dependant on a silent -
Second Innings
By Bharat SundaresanThey huddled around me, like close-in fielders on a Mumbai dustbowl
A couple stood a few feet away, hands clasping their knees
The other two much closer, crouched low right under my nose
To catch anything that came their way -
home reimagined
By Isabella Eichler-OnusWhen did we become so unfamiliar? Were we collectively wronged, or did I just let go? Like my gut with the dip in the road. Thread pulling organs down, before the body has a chance to react. // Whiplash from this new new music in an old place. 70,000 years old. Sing us a song! No more than a mumble in the passenger seat. Sun’s heat magnified by th… -
Welcome
By Ziggy RamoI’d like to acknowledge
the lack of knowledge.
We renamed the Frontier Wars -
The Water Talks
By Rob WatersLet me start by saying that I do not claim to be an academic.
But I know what it’s like to sit by a river.
What it feels like to watch water pass by, maybe never to be seen again.
Water lost around the bend -
ganma-li
By Rudi BremerYour memory of my love is longer than mine
It reaches back to days when I could lose you
Simply by closing my eyes
Or letting go of your hand in a crowd -
Heat Sink
By Evelyn AraluenWhat was it you said on the phone that time
the line hissed from the missile’s radiation
I could hardly hear from the code spluttering
binaries of last night’s undeliverable lullaby -
Self portrait of the poet as his djungelskog
By Troy WongNo formal diagnosis though we’re pretty sure.
Evident from age 18 months. Machine wash
40°C max, high function. Wash-tested but sensitive. -
I wish I was chill
By SezI wish I was chill
sometimes my thoughts are landfill
childhood was netball and divorce
watched Saddle Club but never rode a horse
