When I open my eyes Aleandro has left, his bed sheet folded. For a moment I’m in Santa Monica. The whirring fan, the garish pink walls seem vaguely familiar. Alcohol settles like a carpet of snow falling softly in my head. On the desk next to your Selected, there’s a note, saying “Thanks” with no … Continue reading
everything is as cool as this drink and as warm as the amber sunlight the right amount of salt tastes sweet so make it crunchy and add a good friend to talk with and the living gets even easier so often we are dreamt into the rarest of places in fact, there are no facts … Continue reading
Laid out flat in the back of the station wagon my father borrowed I look up: the leaves are immense, green and golden with clear summer light breaking through – though I turn only my neck I can see all of them along this avenue that has no limits. What does it matter that I … Continue reading
They are a stand of bitter wisdom trees eyes revolving inwards like moons beguiling faces smiling down upon us. They don’t mention (or only in passing) the ways the world is slipping from them: the deft departure of the boyhood friend, the driver’s license routinely revoked, the inability to leave the bath without resting —shamefully—on … Continue reading
In the abandoned hours, I can hear The boorish sibilance of garbage trucks On their rounds. The shy, nocturnal air Builds a brittle nest with strands of fear. Insomniac crickets tick, like manic clocks, In the unmown expanse of the vacant lot Where, last week, on the razor grass, A young woman was raped And … 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
She looked so pretty in her blue jacket and shoes. Colours make me happy, she said. And you make me happy, I said. Or I wish that’s what I had said. All the colours have passed out of her now, like blue leaves drifting down from the trees. © Richard James Allen “Explosively powerful … Continue reading
For Chee and Stephen Who I was in the past, Who I will be in the future – What distractions these are From who I am now. Who I am now, Here, with you. In this moment, You have rewritten my past. You are rewriting my future. What I don’t understand about Who I was … 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
Richard James Allen was born in the New South Wales country town of Kempsey. He spent the first ten years of his life in Vietnam and Japan. Upon his return to Australia, he began writing diaries. Gradually the entries became less and less literal and more and more imaginative as he moved from recording to … Continue reading
Last Letter That night, your final night alive, I turned from your locked red door still holding your letter, a thunderbolt that could not earth itself. Shock remade my brains, and the prevalent devils of ill-love added to the huddle of riddles that failed to divulge their unhappy import— was that your plan? Dellarobbia, my … Continue reading
A pervasive hum, invasive lights, white gown swooping hairy legs, a skinny ghost whose nest-like-head buzzes with static and stinks of cigarettes; a woman afraid to be sent home convinced that death is imminent, and from a key locked room a wail ascends the air to crest the brutal surface of sedation. While I drink … Continue reading
Fifteen thousand years I have slumbered In my icy casket, a hoary Princess waiting Not to be kissed, but punctured By the pick of a prying scientist. My blood, dark as a fairy tale Leached insidiously into the Siberian snow, And my flesh flared red and fresh Enough to eat. My lower limbs devoured By … 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
For Anne You are the dance I prayed for, my love, and I am the prayer That danced you free. I am the supper You earned, Beloved, dancing All of time down to its knees. You are The forest in my blood and the wildness In my woods, in my leaves. And … Continue reading
So why is it when I wake beside this Cornish sea, my tongue Is as tired as it only gets to be, lost in deep, Prolonged and riotous discourse with thee? My sleep Has been as eloquent, it seems, as the breeze that trafficked my window all night, As busy as the sea at her … Continue reading
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. —Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” Like some nocturnal Icarus, I dream too close to heaven— I fly too close to morning— and I wake in pieces. And so I woke this Wednesday, a child disarmed in sleep and felled By the gravity of the ancient light he dawns in. … Continue reading
“Enemies— Part of a world Nobody seemed able to explain But that had to be Put up with.” —Seamus Heaney, “A Herbal” Continue reading
Mark Tredinnick is a celebrated poet, nature writer, writing teacher, and essayist. He lives and writes along the Wingecarribee River, southwest of Sydney, and he travels widely in Europe and America as a poet and teacher. The winner in 2011 of the Montreal Poetry Prize and in 2012 of the Cardiff Poetry Prize, Mark is … Continue reading
Poem and Dish 