Category Tanka

Pat Saunders

eyes glued to screen selecting cheaper plums tapping red box loud barcode beeping plastic note rejected eyes shut black to black messy sheets pushed aside crickets drone hands flapping, head buried mosquito next to ear

Nicoletta Glod

quiet country road with home somewhere far away dusty smells of burnt popcorn, wattle flowers memories rushing back

Marilyn Humbert

In Retrospect a tanka string on a path beside a sheltered bay at Robe where seagulls drift… this calmness within in the ruins of my childhood home swallows nest among the restless ghosts of laughter and tears from the rubble…

Margaret Owen Ruckert

Touring Victoria a tanka string see trees embroidered with flowers and fruits under clouds, scattered like designer cushions … nature’s outdoor room glancing through a chance hole in a fence I’m like a spy rewarded with secrets … the vast…

Madhuri Pillai

walking through memory lane past Merri Creek — how she sniffed and explored every smell and sound balcony breeze … I watch the distant blazing lights of MCG still vying with stars the twinkling horizon of the city neighbourhood cafe…

Luke Ciantar

I never saw you whole just what was left of your home a giant turtle shell your Mission erased by beach-side fire I’m sorry I met only your bones Old Mapoon, Queensland

Lorraine Haig

moonlight peeps through the blinds closing my eyes a possum chuckles near the window summer days in the mulberry tree with purple fingers stains of the past that won’t wash out under the stars waiting for the min min light…

Kent Robinson

an iron bark fire, we snuggle within the warmth in the hills a first star twinkles through frost and all the trees are aflame Bathurst willy wags his tail in the wattle through midday heat the somnolent drone of bees…

Keitha Keyes

holidays … back to our weekender to the smells of wet swimming costumes and sand between our toes the storm is over … on the leaf-strewn lawn the body of a naked chick with no sign of its nest back…

Jan O’Loughlin

this bushland has its spring surprises tiny wildflowers in purple and yellow and fresh black snake scat swollen river littered with toppled trees and flood debris at dusk the glint of fractured light rock scrambling we pit our wits against…