i want, i want, i want whatever it might be that i happen to be wanting today it is a view uninterrupted of where the desert meets the sea instead what i get is a plane-flight over rivers of roads superb ideas that pass like smoke and birds that cut nothing i won’t take my … Continue reading
Leaving is like breaking something not a single crash smash on the floor but a long drawn out rugged exhausting tearing asunder God is in the details as I pick them apart The fine bones The hush I remember that first time unbidden I heard it, as I was outside walking with my cup … Continue reading
do you know do you want to know my people? we’re the ones sitting the hairy legged gnomes sitting by the o cean paddocks sipping moisture from salty scars blee ding the in terminable drift sourcewards opens the wet eye so we can leave the bushy one c losed losen up read currents swells … Continue reading
Genevieve is a Sydney writer. She holds a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney. Her poems have appeared in Blue Dog: Australian Poetry, Five Bells: Landscape Poetry, Island, Meanjin, Southerly, the Henry Kendall Award Anthology 2008, Leaving the Bow and in The Disappearing, an app by The Red Room Company. … Continue reading
Judith Beveridge is the author of The Domesticity of Giraffes, Accidental Grace, Wolf Notes and Storm and Honey and more recently Devadatta’s Poems. Hook and Eye: a selection of poems was published in 2014 for the US market. She is the poetry editor for Meanjin and teaches poetry writing at postgraduate level at the University … Continue reading
Dry defying fingers drop Today’s papers before me – A youth drank and bled He made the front page Dotted by the morning drizzle I’d seen him before A rocky village on his shoulders He sang out of tune: ‘I wish love was an open door I wish love was a raining rainbow’ Mad, he … Continue reading
for Michelle Cahill Some evenings are this fragile. Rainbow lorikeets court baroque chords creaking in my nest of bones. You wrote to wrap my limbs. Morning will sprinkle the conifers, Which of us abandoned the other? We cannot answer with insect wings, serrated jacaranda. What colour is truth? Some days we trust more than desire, … Continue reading
Stuart Barnes is a Tasmanian-born, Queensland-based poet whose writing appears in a variety of publications. He is Poetry Editor of Tincture Journal and Verity La. In 2014 he co-judged the ACT Publishing Awards’ poetry category and was named Runner-up in the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript. He blogs at http://stuartabarnes.tumblr.com/ … Continue reading
Your plumes are as black as the dresses and jackets we wear at the edges of burial plots. I’ve read stories of the storms you portend; how you are a cipher to an inch of rain. For weeks, I’ve watched you plane the sky’s bayberry vellum, seen falling light transpose your silhouettes into a straight-cut … Continue reading
There is no Poet of the Month for December. This month we shall indulge in new poems, for some of the wonderful poets that I featured as Poet of the Month in 2014. It has been an absolute pleasure for me to get to read and of course to share their poetry. You can find … Continue reading
of course the trees are my friends they are like me ~ busy busy bees growing in slow motion they embrace me when I enter the garden they remember that I water them they teach me how to be still they teach me how to be busy busy busy only very very slowly they teach … Continue reading
for Karen Your beauty cannot be translated, but I would fail not to try. It generates a weather no meteorology can describe. It is most like a flower, a flower with moods. An unstill life, in no need of arranging, it arranges itself. It is not fixed, so how can I fix it? It doesn’t … Continue reading
Michele Seminara is a poet and yoga teacher from Sydney. She studied English Literature at The University of Sydney and then spent many years travelling, studying and teaching yoga and meditation, and raising her family. In the last few years she has returned to her writing and discovered that, much to her surprise, she is … Continue reading
At Kuranda for Oodgeroo Noonuccal When I was a girl, I won Your award for my poem: Walking Together. I didn’t know your name inscribed on the trophy I only knew Kath Walker. When I was a girl, I knew Our land belonged to Darkingjung whale people. I knew Budgewoi meant meeting of the waters. … Continue reading
Blue water and blue fibreglass reflect the sun. Salt and cinnamon grease our battered skin and pumpkin flesh. Still-damp costumes chill our nipples and trace wide outlines of our arses on the lounge. I have the Jack of Diamonds. It’s my left bower. I shuffle my suits to suit this new addition. The breeze is … Continue reading
Okra is a vegetable that is not used that much in the West but I absolutely love it. It is sold either fresh, frozen or dried and it has many health benefits. Some people might not like it because it can be gooey if not cooked properly. This problem is not an issue if you … Continue reading
Laksmī under Oath I left my footprints on the threshold of ancient temples, pointing inwards, like the flow of fortune. In 200 BC, well-intentioned seers fashioned me, etched in bronze on lintels, the gateways to the city. The land was barren, a salt marsh where Indra slayed a three-headed fiend, pole stars drifting and rivers … Continue reading
Michelle Cahill is the author of Night Birds. Her collection Vishvarūpa was shortlisted in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She has received awards and grants in poetry, including the Val Vallis Award, a Forward prize nomination, the CAL/UOW International fellowship at Kingston University, London and a Developing Writer’s Grant. She co-edited Contemporary Asian Australian Poets … Continue reading
I belong to two different worlds. One I call home, the other I call homeland. It is very difficult to be split up between two places, especially when the main force behind it is either economical, social or circumstantial. The heart gets left behind and the soul struggles to belong. Twenty six years ago when … Continue reading
Poem and Dish 