Category Longer Poetry

by Suzi Mezei Nestlings plummet hapless from shaken boughs; spat from the maw of the shrieking storm, they land waterlogged on deluged lawn. Cloudburst pastes grey plume to dermis and through water-smeared windows, frogmouths clump like rocks. Outside, under a…

by Mitch Browne I saw you, fellow relic, when we found each other out. Two truants lying smug in a bolthole meant for one. You were extinct, and I was in uniform; we both were out of bounds in the…

by Isi Unikowski An announcement that buses have replaced trains for the evening rush hour has become a soundtrack for the city’s growing pains. A guy in hi-viz redirects bewildered passengers decanted in the drizzle onto the pavement’s terra incognita:…

by Rodney Williams ‘I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be’ – T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ It’s not my place to invent soliloquy Outside lines in a script, I don’t improvise Beneath stage lights I’m given…

by Rodney Williams 1. I turn to glimpse through glass one passing stream as a tram lurches around the bend across this bridge down at the bottom of High Street from Northcote heading south – if barely seeing the Merri…

by Jan O’Loughlin a long finger of suburbia pokes into an immensity of grey-green bush all the houses are clichés fibro cottages and red brick boxes facing the road and each other squarely my new house is a different cliché…

by Doné de Beer In the crevice of my boot soles still lies dirt from the Blue Mountains we trekked last winter. I keep finding traces of you, even when I’ve scrubbed the wound raw. I can still taste the…

by Peter Roberts The initial shock is palpable – my feet like cowards wanting to run, yet in a minute, maybe two, they seem to meld with it and wake fully for the first time in a very long time.…

by Kate King My dog pulled me up to focus on one scent amid a myriad of others, to really take it in, its richness, rankness, recency, all its glorious nuances. Grudgingly, I stopped, paused the torrent of thoughts that…

by Mary Salter Sheer red rock Furrowed and weathered bare Climbs out of a navy sea. Ancient volcanic rim Circles darkly on a Forever blue sky While curved shores Spread like flared skirts Hiding Her fiery centre. Tumbling down now,…