Poems
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Leaving the north
By Oliver Driscoll1993 city guide, signed by the cartographer, a family friend; sweatbands, hardly worn; squash racket, never used; Anthology of American Folk Music Volume Three sleeve; clap sticks; didgeridoo, with native-bee nest, not suitable for playing; bag of frozen Christmas beetles; huntsman; puncture repair kit, suits bicycles, inflatables, camping equipme… -
The Olgas
By Leni ShiltonI
From first light we see them;
pink on the horizon,
their heads tilted down -
The Dig Tree
By Anna Kerdijk NicholsonSitting in a veil and goggles against the flies
Wills writes ‘Dear Father, Cooper’s Creek is like’
and names an English stream. Looks at gnaw marks
of rats in his belt, saddle, even his drawers, -
A Disappearing Act
By Lorin ElizabethThe magician pulls death
out of his hat and
saws it in half and in half again
until death is a carpet -
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Wollombi
By Berndt Sellheimarriving sudden
down goanna tail curves
a stoneyard o shipwrecks -
View of a Library
By Geoff PageA cold wind from the August ranges.
Seen from here exactly
the Brindabellas seem to join
the Library’s line of Grecian columns — -
Appearance Shadows
By Lionel FogartyAppear was always a touch seeing things
Were there one disappearing, came from what was real.
Magic give disappearing acts to appear.
For thousands of living next now one peoples disappearing, -
Lucky Charm
By Virginia JealousThere's water in Lake George.
Been ten years, the locals say.
You're lucky, they say.
That wide, still lake -
Nightpoems 13/7/2010
By Peter BoyleTonight there is no one else in the house. Birdless treeless night, I slip dead alarm clocks
into my pockets before going to bed. When the walls collapse I walk out onto a pier that
has been built into the river below in the valley.
A young boy from a century ago stands there waiting for someone to turn up with a crate of beer. I wal… -
Missing Persons
By Adam AitkenFrom Tokyo to the Gold Coast they’d come. They were in the
papers, instant scoop, apologising, and on the box. In the
lunch break we talked about the old theory and clichés: why
the Japanese don't travel well, how foreign ways corrupt, why -
The Valley
By Zoe DzunkoNow that we have mapped the Ocean it is just so much more
difficult for the boats to disappear. Even so, our phones died
in tandem that first night, we smashed the bottle neck open
against the sun spoiled steel of the barge. And the wine poured -
Featherlight
By Eunice Andradai.
It must have been after the sermon wrung us dry—
his lungs an emptying congregation
as I mouthed sins into my fingers then -
The Ox
By Corey WakelingSo free and easy on the draw capital gain
during the years of the ox, when the five-year-old
painted the domestic and spilled your whiskey,
Kazan scapegoat, -
Monologue of the Alien
By Joel Ephraims“It was apparent from the very start that all was not even or correctly distributed in the way it fell down. Fallen seemed the most appropriate term to those present due to the elasticity and directness of wildness above them and the points of light which swirled to a precise order telling of harmonies that must have been performed there. Here as… -
Living on Chocolate and Beer
By Stuart FlavellChekhov when he travelled
visited cemeteries, tent circuses
and comical plays.
You when you travel survive -
Cranbrook, Mid-June (after Martin Harrison)
By Tom LeeThe inarguable harbour proves the point
hit by the low winter sun, we squint
fishing for cutlery, facing the mirrors
in a high-ceilinged room. -
The Report
By Richard James AllenYou sit down to write a report entitled,
“How is it possible for one person to kill another?”
An hour later you wander off into the streets,
leaving a blank page pocked with dark nothings. -
What Ingrid Bergman Wanted
By Ivy AlvarezBecause the river is never still enough to reflect the sky,
I want to stay. I want to say
to strangers, who say I love you, it’s untrue.
The mirrors of their eyes only blind me. -
Leaves
By Lorin ElizabethShe keeps kites tied to both wrists,
a puppet to the kneeling winds
that remind her you can fly and be grounded
so don’t tell me I’m too old for this