the woman in blue
all weathers
walks
like it’s killing her
ponchoed walker
orange flame spiralling
through long grass
she blows a trail of smoke
gently taps her ciggie
they keep her company
ash flakes float
the blushing moon
her cigarette burns
Lizz Murphy’s ‘The Woman in Blue’ Read More »
My nieces and nephews are chasing me up the wall.
In my mother’s house they are mustered
year by year, just as I was: A.J.C. 30/8/63
(five foot two) pencil brands in paint.
Heels tight against the floor ankles strained
careless as shanghais they aim themselves up
quiver as their grandmother
flattens curly heads with the carving knife
& pins them like chrysalises to the wall.
(1963. My two brothers straight as arrows
shoot past me, threatening the ceiling where possums
and cobwebs hide the bullseye. Our first year
in this house. I had done all my growing.
I had left it climbing with small sharp feet in the houses
which came before. My brothers with their eyes on the sky
stuck their fingers to skin-thin balsa, floated model
aeroplanes over their beds and over the paddock
of palely shooting carnation-leaved stock feed;
talked of piloting jets, Mathematics permitting.
I began to look horizontally as far
as America in full colour copies of Life:
John F. Kennedy with a fatal, choirboy grin.)
1981. Up the wall now delicate as insects
my nieces and nephews leave their marks.
Somewhere in the flat distance, patterns of houses
like nomads’ tents — at the heart of each
one single pole a ladder
of wounded paint. In the steamy dust
the deserts we planned to cross wait still.
Memories, slick mirages, blind us. Here all our lives
settle back to this: on a wall, marks
of moths’ feet, reaching for the sky.
Jean Kent’s ‘IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE’ Read More »
half-naked, trawls through garbage
every day in the neighbourhood
the last items I see
him take home after sunset
are two scraps of gold armour
the sun has forged on his shoulders
Cui Yuwei’s ‘Junkman’ Read More »
after five hours of floating
in the air
or a hundred years
since the sailing
a great escape
my great grandfather did
this place he transited
now I’ll call it home
he could never
return
in flesh
his blood
that flows in me
now here afoot
he used to walk
or maybe run
whose house?
Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang’s ‘first night in Macao’ Read More »
In Southern Bosnia
where I first knew you
where there was so much death
there was a beautiful bridge
you can’t kill memory
where there is a beautiful bridge
this is a story about Mostar
a story about Stari Most
but no, it’s a story about us
and the fight we had
on the beautiful bridge
and how I swore to you
we would both grow old
there would be no war
you didn’t listen (I remember)
you kept on slapping me
we got home we didn’t speak
we made japrak and chorba
we cried and held each other tight
later they tortured you
then they killed you
it was a beautiful bridge
all the water gone
of course I write this.
Rob Schackne’s ‘Stari Most’ Read More »
when street lights are smudged
when high-rises lose their grids
when the city submits to abstraction
on a red alarm night
on an east-bound train
silence behind masks
warning ring in the ears
smog herds us home
it was in early summer when I last saw you
around Travessa da Paixão
you told me you’d eventually
move to the mainland and I replied
I’d go overseas
don’t know why but parting
always reminds me of drifting clouds
maybe because I know that Xu Zhimo poem
embarrassingly well and you’ll agree with me
a seaside town like Macao presents
the best kind of summer cloud
generous in volume and almost tangible
the same kind in Perth in winter
with colours like the orange and pink
in Bonnard’s le bol de lait
now as we emerge from another hutong
branched out from the Drum Tower
counting yellow and red halos
cast by street lamps on our way to DDC
I’ve forgotten the air is toxic
and wish instead
with dust’s magic trick
a seedling will appear on my palm
and then I can watch it sprout
leaf by leaf and on a rainy day
strive to catch every droplet
from returning clouds
Iris Fan Xing’s ‘Smog’ Read More »
absence touches me in ways i couldn’t predict
your body feels nice against mine
filled w/ secrets
is that bag smiling?
the heart’s an emotional organ mine
consumed 15 donuts today all jelly
when did you get so tense? there’s nothing
quite like urinating
out in the open air there’s always
god i love this music isn’t it dreamy?
[the sound of wind thru pines]
i’m now upside-down
i’m talking about seeing beyond fear
really sick & rotten really weird stuff is love
the blood of the universe?
pride obscures it i’m holding
in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies
there are things dark & heinous in this world
of things you can’t get anywhere
but we dream they can be found in other people
[pours a coffee]
i plan on writing an epic poem about this
[promptly spits it out]
about looking at the world w/ love
[into a microphone]
is this thing on?
Toby Fitch’s ‘Pinned Weeks’ Read More »
sometimes a mountain
will have its one little cloud
grey as water falling
just there
neither here nor
high hover of all day hung
as if grazing
although at this height
the grass is gone
no matter
in another world
it’s a feather fallen
for windlick
wisp of weather
small
so thick sometimes
you won’t see through
like a little fleece you’d call in for dinner
lithe as the day is long
climb to it
and watch your footing
hang halo
with a length of word
and mouthful meaning
too much has been read in
all summer
soft as shadow
grass woven
in the years of wind
clouds cut hard here
shape straight lines
carve time from
the day to pass
there’s nothing in this world
fast as a mountain
see how it ran till
watch the moss bloom
there’s nothing so sound
as a cloud asleep
time simply
won’t pass here
Kit Kelen’s ‘sometimes’ Read More »
Sitting on a tram,
watching a group
of tough young people,
I notice one of the girls
has a huge hickey
on her neck. I’m sorry
but that is hilarious.
Now I’m convinced
that the world is conspiring
against me being a serious writer
and any minute now
there will be a giant
banana cream pie flying
through the air towards me…
just before it hits me
a poem will sacrifice itself
and jump in the way
to save me from losing my mind,
just like this one did.
Michael Crane’s ‘The great conspiracy’ Read More »
When something’s the matter
she hangs in her hammock
and sways the sad days away.
She gives in to gravity
lying there passively
letting the levity
carry her
haunting and
traumatic
thoughts to the
sky.
The swaying brings a stillness
that relieves her illnesses
even if just for a while.
Her mind is uncluttered
and pacified gradually
thinking how
very apt
it is that
the hammock
hangs in the
shape of a
smile.
Clark Gormley’s ‘Hanging in the Hammock’ Read More »