Category Longer Poetry

Benediction

by MARILYN HUMBERT Red rock bleeds into cliffs staining a serpentine path to the gap where the white sand creek bed gleams, we sit on the rim legs crossed our voices raised in song. Grace notes mingle with pollen and…

Topography 29/8/2023

by KRIS HEMENSLEY  29/8/2023 (after Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fatal encounter with deer on night road no green sward and better said sweet deer’s fatal encounter with Knausgaard — p.43 WINTER “I looked at the trembling outline in the ditch before…

Topography 9/8/2023

by KRIS HEMENSLEY  9/8/2023 (1 p.m. —i am man with a bun sitting in the sun —stalked by gull —same one each time? daily patrol —hah! —bench & flagstones — any human’ll do —add crumbs to its exemplary skin &…

Grey — the Colour Nomads Leave Behind

by JEANNIE HAUGHTON where landscape dwarfs               everything freckled and speckled umber sands asphalt ribbon looping between outcrops russet boulders burnished bronze scrub fading into a blue distant skyline- shimmer-hazed blips nomad vans embracing the long haul languid stretches roads and…

Bucket List

by JEANNIE HAUGHTON cloudless endless sky Cessna drone drills holes in the silence predator-tense the man with a camera perches               cockpit awkward scanning for horizon-framed perfection he filter-tweaks expanses of landscape zooms               a bird’s eye view of a flea-sized roo…

Unbidden

by JEANNIE HAUGHTON Briny                        the air tanging the tongue misting the eyes under sombre skies the stones on the waterline roll-rest-roll-rest-roll-rest hightide treasures pocketed parched-pale ’til wave-slapped a palmed pebble is magically reborn recalling nurimono that other sheen in that other…

Searches through Tall Timber     

by ALLEYNE HALL In memory of my father, John Leslie Hall From Tallarook, VIC – June, 1931 After our first search, in teeming rain, on horseback, through mud and steep bush, they radioed me at the station … I still…

Opening  

by J F GARROW  To Rodney, and to my son Valve opens and train follows on through the high forest, No promises to anyone, just heat, and, also, stashed remembrances of other, older Smutty starts, and then, on, through the…

New England

by JEREMY GADD As we passed the turn-off to Duri, which, according to locals, is synonymous with ‘dry’, we were surprised to see paddocks carpeted with yellow blooms of cultivated canola but, when past Tamworth, after climbing the Moonbi range…

Cliffs, rocks, water

by ZAC EATON Who searches for who? These tracks still steep The waves always held ya on the downfall. And the sand’s still soft. Feet go by themselves, From beach to beach Sniffing in the salt, Thinking of the words…