Poets & Poems
Magpies
By Joelistics
I dreamt I was a thousand feet tall and I could see all the way to Sydney
And I could smell the desperation and the fear and the excitement
And ...
All of the lights
By Joelistics
All of the lights
All of the lines
All of the liars
All of the shadows
All of the shapes
All of the sirens
All of the minutes
All of ...
The Disappearing
The Disappearing has been redeveloped and we invite you to submit your poems about fading and disappeared places and spaces. Explore now »
Salt
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Sarah Watters
Salt
We bathe in its oceans
crispy as it settles.
Marking your skin with mapping of the earth
exposing the labyrinth of your being
Our soul bleeds ...
Byron
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Stephen Thomas
Wind rushes through the car
Shadows carpet the road
A narrow line of jagged grey
Curls through the trees
A house nestled in the slopes
The world ...
Whole (if it is all one thing)
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Kate Liston-Mills
Whole (if it is all one thing).
Synchronicity flickers every step –
match
match
match
light.
The whole place is burning now, I thought myself right, I thought ...
Sydney Town Hall Tree
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Steve Denham
In my teens, Sydney’s flora
brushed the inner city and CBD
with green - but the first tree
I really ‘saw’ ...
curtsying to a zephyr at the ...
My Grandfather’s Ice Pigeons
By Robert Adamson
My grandfather would walk into the house,
on a summer evening after his work, then empty
his catch of mudcrabs into the bath-tub;
they'd flow out in a stream ...
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
By Robert Adamson
'Meanwhile I was sinning more and more'
Saint Augustine
I suffered when Una my first love
was torn from ...
Alofa at the Vai
By Christine Afoa
First day in Sā
Us fia-palagis go swimming
At the vai during low tide:
My four younger sisters,
Two uluka’e brothers walk behind us.
Our cuz from NZ,
Teine ...
Missing Persons
By Adam Aitken
From 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 ...
On the Chemin de Fer
By Adam Aitken
On railway land
Chemin de Fer,
avenue of graded lime.
On each side weeds:
broom, juniper,
perennial oak.
Almond trees in
pink white
like cherry bloom
but tougher, more industrial ...
Pol Pot in Paris
By Adam Aitken
Oh happy child, kindly teacher – were you a fake?
Like you I'm taciturn
but when I give an order who's to hear?
Paris, I found it cold but ...
I Smell Buffalo in Cambodia
By Adam Aitken
after Tomaž Šalamun
I smell buffalo in Cambodia, ruins in Angkor.
I had come from a rich disinfected nation
to one overflowing with frozen steaks
and a disarming happiness.
No ...
Notes on the River 8
By Adam Aitken
Voilà! Slums levelled, wharves, boat ramps,
central planning.
Whites, Koreans, Chinese
in cravats and big sombreros
sip their Caiperoskas
in the Foreign Correspondents Club,
the Nikon 1960 meets
Phnom Penh ...
The Anti-travel Travel Poem
By Adam Aitken
The anti-travel travel poem suggests the road
romance & regrets
the endless paperwork we left behind
I dreamed of walking boots that wouldn't lace
anti-travellers can never get lost
in ...
