L

Alive in Dubbo

‘Trafalgar Place’ by D.G. Lloyd

Trafalgar Place
ruts in the road
painted along the gutter
All Drains Lead To Troy Gully
and on Wirraway Close
a dented No Through Road sign
An old house was torn down
leaving nothing but a jade plant
like the stark withered tree
outside Dan Murphy’s
the corner
of Windsor Parade

There is manual labour and there is drinking
and words within words
Are you okay?

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Alive in Dubbo

‘Gun’ by D.G. Lloyd

Wrecked farm equipment with webbings of dead 
grass
in the open fields of Lazy River Estate …
the overhanging foliage
… more than twenty kilometres out of town
on the old Dubbo Road
was the pistol club.
I had only been a few times.
Luke told me I could get a One Month Membership.

They all said I showed potential.
There were three ranges:
a couple for the .22 calibre and one for the smaller 
air pistol.
It was fun shooting targets every Sunday.
5 bullets. 4 rounds. Timed.

One day some random guy walked in …
paid his membership and went outside.
He loaded the gun …
put the barrel in his mouth and blasted out the back 
of his skull.
But that was not the reason I never went back.
I just lost interest.

I never saw Luke much afterwards either.

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Alive in Dubbo

‘Devil’s Hole’ by D.G. Lloyd

Boys getting stoned and jumping off the cliff
into the deepest part of the river;
no one knows for sure how deep.
See you in Cobar! we shouted, as we drifted away 
downstream.x

Flocks of cockatoos screeched as they flew over the 
slopes,
the dirt road and metal posts,
fallen logs and blue-green algae,
dead ryegrass undulating.

I nearly drowned fighting the current as I tried to 
cross back,
tussled in the willows, vines and throwing up.
Blistered and scarred for seven days.

Devil means Bunyip and Evil Spirit Dreaming.
The elders frightened the children with ghost stories
to save them from drowning near the bend in the 
river.
It’s a strange bed up north, said Gazza.

Jason and Craig saw a kingfisher on the fence,
You can tell them by their pointed beaks.
I spotted a pelican on the water’s surface,
It must be lost.

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Letters in Language Harold Legaspi

from Harold Legaspi’s Chapter Ten in Letters in Language

My parents know me better than I know myself. Someone who learned the hard way. I learned much later in life. Yaya wrung the neck of the hen then chopped off its head. Did a headless dash. Our bloodied driveway. Never met anyone so fascinated with rust, who took me to warehouses, cemeteries and shipping yards. We hurled stones in La RIve Gauche. All that hard work was framed and hidden underneath the bed, where it could no longer be seen. Discontinued my studies. Removed my designation. Left my scribble in his postbox where it remained unread. Walis tingting. He wouldn’t sit in the cinema after the movie had begun. I re-watched Tan Lines isolated in spirit. He never forgot my face but couldn’t remember my name. 

from Harold Legaspi’s Chapter Ten in Letters in Language Read More »

Huang Lihai 作者, 黃禮孩

Huang Lihai was born in the 70s in Xuwen county, the southernmost tip of the Chinese mainland. His poems have been included in more than one hundred anthologies and he has published a number of poetry collections, including I Know Little about Life, Feed Rainbows to the Birds and Who Can Outrun Lightning. He has written essays and critiques on art, dance, film, and poetry. In 1999, he founded Poetry and People journal and in 2005 established the Poetry and People International Poetry Award. He has won a number of prizes, including the 8th Lu Xun Literature and Arts Award, Phoenix TV’s Annual Artist Award, the Lebanon International Literary Award and the first Hai Zi Poetry Award. He is currently the editor of China and Western Poetry Magazine.

Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications

Feed Birds Rainbows

Translator(s) 譯者, 客遠文Kit Kelen, 宋子江Song Zijiang

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Harold Legaspi

Harold Legaspi

Harold Legaspi is a poet writing in Darug land. His first book, Letters in Language, was the runner-up in the inaugural Puncher & Wattmann Prize for a First Book of Poetry, was published 2021 in the Flying Islands Pocket Books of Poetry series with Cerberus Press and Association of Stories in Macau.

Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications

Letters in Language Harold Legaspi

Letters in Language

Letters in Language re-iterates what is possible in the prose poem and autography, and is intended to evoke cultural memory. The Tagalog (Filipino) mirroring the English translations are intended to provoke monolingual speakers to question, as it conveys Harold Legaspi’s identity, being bi-lingual, in a manner of speaking, to tell his story in a language he almost forgot through the migration process into Australia. By conveying meaning in two languages, his writing functions in the most concrete way, through exemplifying not abandoning the language that raised him in a land now foreign to him.

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Myron Lysenko

Myron Lysenko

Myron Lysenko began writing haiku and senryu in the late 1990’s.

He is the Victorian Representative for the Australian Haiku Society. He has published five books of poetry and one of haiku/senryu. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world. Myron has run almost 50 public and private ginko since 2008. A ginko is a haiku outing in a scenic spot where people write haiku, then share and discuss them. Myron has been writing, performing, publishing, editing and conducting poetry workshops since 1980. He was a founding editor (with Kevin Brophy) of the lively independent literary magazine Going Down Swinging from 1980 to 1994, which they then passed on to new editors. The magazine recently celebrated its fortieth year anniversary with a bumper issue.

Links: myronlysenko.wordpress.com

Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications

a ghost gum leans over

Myron Lysenko’s ‘a ghost gum leans over’ is bigger than most haiku books being published today. The book is divided into sections or sequences, including his daughter’s battle with cancer spanning ten years;  a year where a relationship breaks down and splits a family in two; a section of light poems, another of heavy poems and one about Lysenko’s local area in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria. The sixth section consists of haiku written for special occasions.

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