ISSUE FOURTEEN

found poem)

Tell no one, one of us is lying.

In the morning I’ll be gone, girl,

no time for goodbye.

With no one as witness,

we begin at the end.

Everything I never told you,

don’t tell.

The dead don’t speak.

Things fall apart behind closed doors,

close to home when no one is watching.

No one needs to know

those we left behind run away.

Dirty tricks, dead pretty: all that remains,

the bones beneath dark places in the woods.

Farewell, my lovely predator.

More Than Hope.

There’s a twang in the air, a swell.

Doctor says no cancer

as far as she could tell.

News is everywhere, hanging around.

I make coffee, an innate honesty

straight to the ganglion.

What happens when one mingles a tornado with yoghurt?

A child builds a tiny fort with the mother’s pens

then reprogrammes the family computer.

Nothing left grows more attractive

it’s a coughed-up kind of immortality.

Have you said everything yet?

That may be the last question.

Living a truth

will die in a truth.

Don’t know about guilt

but regrets are outweighed by some discerned purpose

looking way back

at it all.

Perhaps I still try.

Glide at the light

mess with its head.

THE SILENCED VOICE: OCTOBER 15, My young nephew

says our country’s shameful 

I don’t disagree

but say 

a new dawn will come

It always does

after the night

You will live

to see it

He says

I can’t lie

I doubt it

But I believe it

even if I doubt 

That day will come for me

But it will 

for him 

And all 

Australia’s young

Our PM’s right

To quote another’s PM’s words:

‘Success is not final, 

failure is not fatal – 

it is the courage 

to continue that counts.’