I won’t wear red to draw attention, sing or whistle my favourite melody. I won’t linger near the shadowed walls to stir or fret the hungry ghosts, unrested souls trying to recall a life without fear or violence or tragic luck. Their whispers are all sighs and envy as I walk home in open lamplight.
from Rob Shackne’s “A Chance of Seasons” Read More »
Note: an ‘elevensie’ is a poem form with the title in the middle and five lines on either side.
how about I sleep out here tonight final evening let the ropes tighten to the dew hold the shape of days before the road and home inhale me set me once again
to use
on trickier palaver Kent pumpkins after hand-pollination and the herbs we need for winter altar blooms to go in I am already one hand in the pantry broody hen
an elevensie from Kerri Shying’s “Knitting Mangrove Roots” Read More »
being surrounded by the sea is a destiny
it will never turn around
it stands on the reefs, commanding you to sing
you don’t have much
but singing makes you wealthy
because of song
birds fly out from your throat
because of singing
flowers come up through the stones
(translated by Kit Kelen and Fei Chen)
Cliff wind has a particular
whistling sound like a gas bottle
released a quarter turn –
gulls tumble in its slipstream
wallabies are fastened to
the grass by their ears.
Here on the high side
we squint the miles of absolute blue
and watch the white knots of diving birds
unravelling to stitch the sea.
In this ritual of circles
the trees are intertwined. The tracks
we tread, dreadlocks on a leviathan’s head.
Below is the spiral heart of palms
And grass trees growing crooked spears.
And lower still, beneath the waves
the constant swirling helix of blue blood
whooshing through a vein.
from Judy Johnson’s “Exhibit” Read More »
The people have filled the city’s open spaces,
they stand shoulder to shoulder, expecting everything.
The platform above the Square is empty.
A buzz of unease caresses the bare heads,
their coronas of hair thinning into the breeze;
see the rolled-up newspapers, the scarves that twitch.
The hum mounts to a whisper, the whisper
delivers its secret, the secret
is betrayed, spreads like an epidemic;
outside the city they are building a pyramid of books.
from Alex Skovron’s “Water Music” – Sunspots Read More »
rivers are urgent
for the sea
bringing letters from winter
the farmer writes to
a summer with
his shovel in wet mold
the clouds gather
what is not yet
said
(translated by Kit Kelen with the author)
from Odveig Klyve’s “Let’s Take the Blue Sky by Storm” Read More »
summer holiday
we pitch a tent in your nan’s
front yard
an argument
on the northerly wind
our pitched tent
overcast evening
I hide her car keys
in my underwear
Three haiku from Myron Lysenko’s flying islands pocketbook “a ghost gum leans over” Read More »
The Apricot & The Lemon Tree
at the edge of the village
come to an oak much older than me
that’s where I’ll seek advice
– Kit Kelen
tenant 1 planted the couple while tenant 2 and 3
nurtured their growth and here I stand, tenant 4
before their arthritic leaves & brittle branches
unlike the owl and the pussycat they are stuck
too close and deep rooted with a stubborn sense
of belonging to a land they’ve failed to interpret
once gardens were ballrooms of sweet & bitter
fruit throughout Melbourne’s Northern yards
expecting Mediterranean weather to migrate
now these replica orchards are starving for genteel
seasons, expecting to be washed with lukewarm
hose each night, even when sky drizzles or sprays
with no strength to stretch their limbs, with no
plump, sun-kissed balls of juice for birds & jam
with no smell for dressed salads or fragrant tagine
they offer a time-warp of cravings & nostalgia
in the back yard, encircled by concrete and brick
ignoring the bottlebrush with its bright red offers
by Angela Costi
Common or Garden Poets #13 – Angela Costi inviting Denise O’Hagan Read More »
i hate them
the truth is out. and they hate me.
them, the barbarians in baseballs hats,
twisting in chairs lined up in artificial order,
and carving their loathing on the tabletops.
do you know why the roman empire fell? I ask.
who cares? a boy giggles.
that is the reason, i say
you are old & fat, they say.
they are young & fat, I don’t say
because i don’t want them to get healthy.
they can stay ugly and stupid so I can despise them.
why envy the awkward root they didn’t have
or their perfect wet dreams pearling
on the television screen?
…Rae Desmond Jones’ ‘Decline and Fall’ Read More »
Where the bees rest where the butterflies play
“What we most need to do is to hear within us
the sounds of the earth crying…”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
from October the trees are all betrothed each
to the gardener in nets white gauze
figs peaches sequestered from the busy beaks
and teeth of bats and birds
the day sultry as a girl in her slip swimming
waiting on the Southerly Buster
cicadas heat from the city a brown bubble popped
by flat-iron cloud-banks
high and sharp as the beaked head of a kookaburra
tall sky and
gratefully I’m small
up the hill
march the white
agapanthus forcing genetic breaks
onto our purple beauties scrambling the misty blues
to hybrids there is no
one garden in my street
I see the Ice flower
nipped out on a beach walk mini red-fringed suns
succulents rescued from places where old age gave way
to builders’ aspirations pieces of old friends
the Mentone red geranium that Gaagang saw from his pram
Hoya from the balcony back at the flat the boys had
in Drummoyne your tree
a pencil planted just before
you died
begonias like Mum’s pelargonium from The Redemptorists
a fine piece of Menken’s building lotus out of farm dams
mingle a floral beer garden with tin peacocks
and galahs turmeric galangal Vietnamese mint
vanilla orchid mustard greens
are you hungry thinking how to mow around
the condiments and if you’ve ever seen a chicory flower
mauve and delicate as tissue
I see a garden built by birds by bats
bullrushes
flown in yonder from Ash Island
White Cedar loquat air mail
in a sweep of feathers
the odd drop of oyster shells
beside the Jizo statue
bark depends from gum tree piling around roots
mandarin and finger lime lemons parsley
all engrossed with weed with blue tongues
pushing up in pots in tubs in cisterns
anywhere
these tiny hair-drawn feet
can tread
Common of Garden Poets #12 – Kerri Shying Read More »