Blue cloud band
by MARGARET OWEN RUCKERT I’m walking the edge of a sleepy river slapping its sides like a cool bass player jazz at sunset, songs in the air horns and wood, winds over water. Mike’s antique piano smooches and honks…
Longer Poetry
Read MoreBlue cloud band
On turning away
by PETER ROBERTS The great rivers of East Gippsland pass by like an avenue of honour. Nicholson, Mitchell, Tambo, Snowy, Bemm and more. It is their determination we admire most – to cut through rock and clay, taking no backward…
Maatsuyker
by PETER ROBERTS We are all refugees. His pipe etched a halo of Champion Ruby fumes that even the blast of the Roaring Forties couldn’t displace. Why did she leave him? Rising, he paused to watch the fairy prions and…
Winter in Darwin
by PETER ROBERTS I undertake this ritual each night post the dishes seated on the rendered balcony a rhapsody of bougainvillea below as the sun slowly deconstructs into the calm of the Arafura Sea across which…
A drama of distance
by IAN REID Some neighbours shun some outlooks. Across the street the blinds are always shut. It’s nothing personal; she seems civil enough but likes to keep eyes closed to the trickling traffic. They are luckier here in this old…
Position, position
by IAN REID What it lacks in structural elegance, this house makes up for in its elevated posture. Most of the city and suburbs spread out flatly but here, leaning with hands on a sill, the occupants can gaze across…
Riverbeds
by STEPHANIE POWELL Your appreciation of this lake is taxonomic, silt oozing Lower Palaeozoic deposits, the generational ebbing of rock. Don’t be stupid the fish are gone and you won’t find them with your palms in the stream. The sun…
Camping
by STEPHANIE POWELL It’s a real bastard, the breeze Going into my coat Combing the pores Between fibres Fresh from the Strait – Salmon has cooled itself in this air The pines around the Caldera bend I do not see…
Small acts
by STEPHANIE POWELL You are with the sea, in the oaty craw of water. Each morning I wake to find the bed empty. The house full of splashing and dawn. Remind me to tell you, how the bus climbs the…
Untitled # 99.56
by WAYNE POLLARD What is known is forgotten. That which is forgotten is re-enacted to be new. I was once. I am now. Clouds become fans blowing air across the barren decks of container ships. An orchestra naked behind a…