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Category: Poetry
Compagnon pour la vie, Alyssa Byrnes
A first date,
suit and tie,
black and white
her name is Adélie.
She stands,
in a beautiful dress,
similar colours across her breast
taking my breath,
we dance.
Pink shoes on her feet,
her laugh so sweet
how fortunate to meet
are we.
Seafood platters,
we waddle, getting fatter
our way back home,
where nothing else matters
but her.
We marry,
the cold winter season,
though no-one was freezing,
we went swimming.
and fishing,
and marched on into living,
together, apart,
we have made our mark,
my lovely wife.
—
“Did you know that penguins mate for life?”
The words flew from parted lips,
as you watched her hips,
the pancakes she flipped,
sizzled softly.
“For life?”
You heard excitement,
but that’s not what she meant,
nor how things went.
Wedding bells ring,
you recite loving words,
you hope she’s never heard,
overcome by nerves,
you kiss.
Your heart is afloat,
honeymoon on a boat
her ‘I do’ means ‘I don’t’.
Years pass, a slow burn,
words leave ugly scars,
from a love written in the stars,
that’s now lost on nights spent in bars,
all gone.
You wonder how,
divorce comforts you now,
life made so foul.
—
The trap has been set,
the genetic code brings delight,
never do they fight,
knowing this is right;
the feast.
There is no question,
and nothing quite left in,
the skin.
The laws of nature,
allow the quiet romance,
a passionate dance,
they know at a glance,
it’s time.
And so, the night falls,
this time known to all,
for his lover to gorge.
Hungry eyes stare him down,
caressing his face,
rips his head off with great pace,
and devours with haste,
no waste.
The moment was quick,
and with one final lick,
so, on the clock ticks.
Partially Mine, Sharon Johnston
We talk
He laughs
i smile
Preemptive aura hits
Déjà vu
His eyes plead
i know it’s coming
So does he
Then he’s gone
Disappears from reality
Trapped somewhere in his mind
No longer mine
A vacant stranger
He stumbles
Falls
i reach
Brace his body against my own
Heavy struggle
i lower him to the ground
Gently
Tenderly
i wait
He reaches, eyes unseeing
He grunts, voice unknowing
He drools, mouth unbreathing
i watch
Then he intakes
Swallows
Mumbles
Hums
Partially back
Partially complex
Partially mine
The Results are in, Jasmine Giuliani
Our fate sealed with handshakes between
coal soot tycoons and media moguls
and big banks and fear-mongers
and bigots and slippery dealings and
hateful concessions and business as usual.
The echo of humanity no longer
brings comfort or false hope on a sleepless night
where the minority in white towers do not stand alone,
no, they stand in force with
the apathetic, the selfish “not in my backyard”, the grasping at jobs in mines, the “get mine”, the investors and retirees in cladded homes, the weak trembling at the feet of reform
who don’t shake the norm because it builds them houses with pools to retire in behind gates untouched.
The “I worked hard for my money” as they grasp it to their cabana and believe every lie ever told, like the powerful care if there’s not a vote to be stolen, the privatised with dead shining eyes,
the hateful and the lazy and “aspirational” who don’t care to see past their own nose, the easily manipulated
who believe the targeted campaigns and selfish jokers who snigger as the planet burns.
In the tatters, it’s the same people
who quietly and loudly do the work, pay the price, who
have paid each day since colonisers came,
since they fled, who watched on without surprise,
who continue to rise, despite the feet on their backs. The too well known hateful slurs at the curl of an identity, “unknown entity”, the same groups who
organise and retaliate and never rest,
who were born fighting,
never had a “fair go” in this “easy going” home
the same few who care to share some of it with the rest, those
who know it all means nothing
on a dead planet.
Two Thumbs Make Butterfly Wings, Eva Matheson
Everyone does it, not a big deal. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I want to see the kids, the grandkids, I want to stay in touch with old friends. It’s time to spread my social media butterfly wings.
Create a username… I’ll use the same password I use for everything… Hello, Facebook.
Three weeks later.
Everyone does it, no big deal.
Create a username… Hello, Instagram.
Two weeks later.
Everyone does it, no big deal. I hear the US President loves it.
Create a username… Hello, Twitter.
One week later.
Sometimes I wish my passwords were harder.
Everyone does it, no big deal.
Create a username…
So this is Netflix.
Just one more episode, then I’ll post the grandkids Christmas presents.
A Country with no Borders, Hiroki Kosuge
An act of pouring yogurt into granola and other perverted sexual practices are prohibited here.
With millions of flushed contact lenses, the ocean finally found the sky.
Skyscrapers with red lights blinking on top remind me of monkeys in heat.
This aquarium exhibits more than 10,000 animals that hate human beings.
Before sleeping alone, I cut both an Ethernet cable and my umbilical cord.
Now I have magical powers, I can let you or freshwater clams speak. Choose.
Some angels have tattoos of demons.
A single mother imprisoned for allegedly pouring Red Bull into an ant colony.
To be murdered or to be brutally murdered that is the question.
I have become a butterfly because you told me to do whatever I liked, Daddy.
Rain is medicine. Lightning is a jewel. Cumulonimbus clouds are, now, hold your breath.
‘No matter what color you dye your hair, the world will end.’
I failed to become a poet or a patron of a poet. Good night.
The Dainty Line, Leanne Wicks
I want to see
beyond my borders
over the entrenched lies.
I am the Australienne
submitting to her husband
in this land of sweeping pains.
Two dead women every week
at the hands of men
stained with green and guilt.
My mother told me so
after the horse had trampled.
Where are the examples,
frontline warnings
from matriarchs who knew
the battle that I would gallop into?
Granny’s general memories
refused to retrieve files
but crossing the dainty line
I asked about feminine care
Oh, we didn’t talk about anything
down there! Girls were frightened,
ignorant. Our mothers never said.
We used a belt and cotton rags.
Bleeding’s what we’ve always done.
As I grew, I never knew why
she didn’t talk to Grandpa.
Maybe it was the war
that tore them. He was as tall as a gum,
RAAFed in Borneo.
After Granny’s funeral I sorted her things.
On the highest shelf
at the back of the laminated wardrobe
behind precise pink and elf-green
hand-knitted jumpers it
was hidden:
A douche kit.
Bottle of Lysol (used for bathroom tiles, floors
and uterine walls)
stood constricted
by the laboratory-red hose
wound within the wash bowl
pump primed and funnel fanged
still ready to wash him away,
fifty years after her final child.
Crescents, Evangeline Hester
The world holds crescents in a cerulean sky
Jostling with stars that in syncopation lie
With the darkness
In homes and hearts
Tomes and marks
Chiselled on the walls
Did you pray today did you pray today did
You
Wash the blood off your hands?
The stain on your lands
The twist in your parts
Our hearts
Crisp and monastic
While our limbs lingered there in the silt
Calling to one another like oily birds
Will you wash yourselves will you wash yourselves will you
Wash
Those homes and hearts?
Bleeding parts
Of some great horned beast
His arteries the streets
Clogged with jostling worshippers
And Philistine foreskins
Curdling and curling inwards
Crisp like burnt plastic
Latrines the gutters
And dusty shutters
That wink prying eyes at one another
Have you prayed today have you prayed today have you
Into the dusk.
At home,
A mother strangles a bird with scarlet thread
While windowmen
Wash the blood off cedar doorposts
Door hosts
In Sodom
MelalUKEa Boy, Leanne Wicks
Music Class
‘Where’s your guitar, Dylan? Hop to it, boy.’
He straightened and skipped a half step until
sniggers slithered around his legs.
Why do teachers say things they don’t mean?
Two rows from the front, Dylan held the neck
of the borrowed guitar toward Mr D as if it were his own.
I must concentrate today.
Fingers found F chord
and the calming strum
settled his stomach.
At the coda, Dylan’s mind
shifted to the window
the sea glinted
for him.
Soon.
Melalukea Medicine
8am Saturday. Scrambled eggs done.
Time for the sea rhythms, water and sun.
Dylan clips his helmet and rides through the breeze
down to the saltiness, down to the sea.
He reaches behind to check it’s still there,
pats the side of his uke and smiles to the air.
Notes meet his heart as his feet touch the sand
peace in his guts, just as he planned.
Pausing to pray, he nods to the edge
looks for the right spot and plonks on a ledge.
A second of still in which
he’s stealing God
for himself.
Seaside Prayer
Hey, God,
It’s so good here with You.
Why can’t I stay?
He slaps the front of the uke with the flat of his hand,
echoing the thwap of sea to rockface.
And plucks at a string, head tilted to compare
tone to roar.
I want to hear You, the rumble of Your voice.
Speak just to me, Father.
You’re always here,
not like my other Dad.
The Interstate Move
Dylan stared at the road
lulled by his head vibrating
on the side window.
Guitar ringtone jolted
his Mum. Always.
She buried phone under the faded
folder of ‘DV Stuff’.
New life in Melalukea. New friends, she said.
But I only have one good friend.
He’s Aspergers, too.
Books hid us
in the demountable library.
Felix. He’s my lucky charm
and we are getting further away
from him every minute.
‘Play me a tune, honey. C’mon
it’ll be OK.’
Dylan scooped the ukelele from his lap.
Familiar, like cuddling the cat.
He leaned to see placement
of second and fourth fingers
on reliable strings.
His fingers kept marching
as he remembered
being stuck
in the dented Hilux
Dad called the truck.
He never did ask
why she didn’t come and get him.
It was his turn with Dad.
The solicitor said he had to go.
Dylan used to stare out the window
and finger his booster seat sash
creating tunes
til the ‘Club House Bar’
neon yawned with him.
Will Daddy find us?
Blessing of the Pets
Dylan snuggles his ukulele
softly kicking the back of the next pew
as his mother shares the first reading.
A whippet slips
her owner’s grasp,
licks his hand.
Tucking the uke inside his blue jacket
Dylan pats the tiny head.
The minister calls for beloved friends
places a hand on fur and feather in turn.
Her lips whisper halos.
Dylan presents the wooden instrument
Rev Bryony turns and looks out over the lake
as if she were called.
She nods and collects the anointing oil
forming the sign of the cross
on the boy’s freckled forehead
then chipped orange paint.
‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
I anoint you, Dylan, and your instrument
May you play your life for God
for He wants to hear you play’
Secret Beach
Bike tossed to sand
like a beach towel
as he seeks the sea.
I know I can play it
Water approaches his ankles
like a loving cat
and draws out minor chords.
Dylan’s breathing slows
Your will be done on earth
as it is in Heaven
Clouds whisper
and their white foam
on the sea coaxes him to play on
Dylan takes another step
and the blue parts
like a glassy aisle to Heaven
before embracing him.
If his mother were here
she would have heard the
change in tone
the resonance of his sea-strum
that echoed even in the shells
as if the sun were dawning
on this beach alone.
‘Stay a while with me, Dylan.’
He hears His voice plaited
around the strings
and smiles, taking another step
into the hug of the ocean.
Play the sea.
His mother would have
screamed
She would have been the only thing to stop
Dylan from soothing
himself up to his neck
ginger tufts of hair like anemone arms
waving farewell.
The Migrant, Pooja Biswas
I know these silences of which you speak.
they emerge as if from a womb, and recede into the spaces
behind your eyes (concave; green-lit), spaces you do not recognise
for strangers have trampled upon them
& long since left their marks.
I know these silences of which you speak.
they curl, quiet animals, beneath the dusk of noonday automobiles
& sheltering hands: heat-softened, quiescent, in untroubled sleep.
no voices wake them, nor thoughts disturb
as the hours pass darkly by, distant as marching feet.
I know these silences of which you speak.
restive as the untilled earth, heavy as the unborn, pale
as the unwritten. upon the stone & hew of plough & sickle,
between the creases of callused hands, these silences
coagulate, stubborn as old sweat or new blood.
I know these silences of which you speak.
the silences of crowds, of bees, in which no single speech
can be discerned; the silences of foreign streets, an exile’s dreams.
the rush & turn of wheels & wind, of dust & departing things,
the subtle loss of passing by, of passing on, becoming history.
I know these silences of which you speak.