Christmas is in the air. You are given into my hands out of quietest, loneliest lands. My trembling is all my prayer. “Five Days Old” – Francis Webb Given Poolside baby showers herald the summer pregnancies. Sweat caresses swollen knees; mothers tally labour hours; giftwrap is everywhere. Christmas is in the air. But by the … Continue reading
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
after Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Giant Snail’ (for PS Cottier) A peaceful life is arduous to attain; desire’s not enough, nor positive aim — one side’s withdrawal is always the other’s gain. What germ inside us inclines towards hate? It seems to me there must be something rank and spindly tangled in the hub of our hearts … Continue reading
i. my darling, this night and your mouth soft ochre under the tallow that wakes us – where we taste salted-wine, sea-grass, and I pull the sea’s black reach from under your skin – sea witch, your squall of dark pearls undone, your hair a black furlong. And I give you sea-flowers, relics – a … Continue reading
The day tries to be as beautiful as you How she mimics your eyes in the dawn How she dresses the wind in your soft T shirt How she laughs sideways at me when I don’t hear what she says How she paints her doves with the same colour wingtips How she escapes me © … Continue reading
I die every second in everyday places you catch the light in my throat and lemon it so I can’t speak easy Make it moon light on the river of my chest Make it sing long as morning on the slow spines of trees green as Sunday school for lovers oh! I die many … Continue reading
Visible in the wild wreck I am is the empire I was My ruin is the most beautiful architecture Wreckage has made me dervish, an astonishing ravaged split log angel In the brown of my eyes pulled up, the Spanish doubloons of the autumn squash yellow of debris, the shock of stained glass intact after … Continue reading
Anne Walsh is a poet and a story writer whose work falls somewhere on the border of those two countries. Sometimes she’s a dual citizen and sometimes she has no country at all. Most of the time she is illegal everywhere; a local nowhere. Hers, the homeless criminality of only the deepest love. She was … Continue reading
For thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle Psalm 18 1 A hackled old mind crawls in its darkness, a story-telling crab cracking the shells of night-hours tries to stretch itself out of its thoughts like a person praying for sufficiency-in-God’s-eyes, so teasingly almost possible. All worlds must end, begin, end, the rap … Continue reading
To blast it out of me – I would die with the blast, some small speck of me remain, fearless, cruising on every possibility, open-eyed, without that soul caving in, without a hundred deaths frog-marching me along to where and when they never say. To blast it out of me, the fear that chokes and … Continue reading
Petra White was born in Adelaide in 1975 and has lived since 1998 in Melbourne where she works as a public servant. Her first book, The Incoming Tide (John Leonard Press 2007),was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary awards and for the ACT Judith Wright award. Her second book The Simplified World (John Leonard Press … Continue reading
After each voyage has crumbled into ephemera I return to the house and its quay; I circle the edge before skittling off to the suburbs. Come to me, I cry, crass plastic and screaming sail, shining, golden city slumped and seeping tune! This evening my heart’s emptier than a harbour. I gulp down … Continue reading
Up Broome-way recently, I was reading Philip Hodgin’s early poems about cancer and thinking back to my own fights with it, wondering what the poems might have been like had I started writing my own by the time it all began. I put his book down to pick at a nail and found a huge, … Continue reading
Off the bus, it’s all light breeze and sea birds, a bit of fish smell, but mostly open sky and an air than lifts you towards it. Later on it warms up and the whole corroding city could be gliding over the escarpment. Things occur at a distance, their sounds barely reach you. Up closer, … Continue reading
Stuart Cooke was born in 1980 and grew up in Sydney and Hobart. He has published poetry, translations, fiction and essays, and his books include George Dyuŋgayan’s Bulu Line: a West Kimberley song cycle (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014), Speaking the Earth’s Languages: a theory for Australian-Chilean postcolonial poetics (Rodopi, 2013) and Edge Music (IP, 2011). … Continue reading
The house slow falling makes no sound Cows amble by without regard Inch by year closer to the ground You look away, pull out your working card Cows all around eat on without regard Through the window corncobs on the floor You look away, play your working card Once running feet and laughter kept the … Continue reading
CRIMSON ROSELLA Platycercus elegans A bushfire has let its embers fall onto your back they cling there still red and black but when the light is slanting low on each feather of your stretched out wing there shines a narrow rim of green the bush begins again and grows in flight your breast curves smooth … Continue reading
Selling news and scandal jobs and dreams she sits beside and beyond the roar the ceaseless metal surge that streams in streets morning and midday holding reams of newsprint in arms that imagined more than selling news and scandal jobs and dreams drivers call or make a sign through windscreens are passed their pages … Continue reading
No wind when I push off in the canoe the water easy against the hull I paddle to the far side, past the flooded fence posts and drift watch through the reeds and grasses as the black swans teach their young, the white belly of the sea eagle a warning high in the woollybutts then … 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
Poem and Dish 