Category: Issue Twelve Poetry

by Tina Tsironis Your pain is a river so clear and so deep my pain is a river so cool and so sleek do you think you could do it?tell me now yank out the sludge smooth me out pry out the bugs my wellness I’d flout wrench out the shit bleeds brighter than gout…

By Wendy J. Dunn Let me count the shades of Yellow: first, a bright morn in a golden dell cowslips’ bells knell welcoming cockcrow as fairies dance their salute to spring drinking dew From a sacred chalice. Betrayal, illness, life giving warmth Yellow can mean so many things But fairies also know yellow warns of…

By Wendy J. Dunn   From the party next door loud music erases any possibility of sleep   I lay in bed and think of the young Our young facing a future when the planet burns (If not burning now)   I think of our young in city streets absent from school told activism is…

By Mickey Stosser   Sometimes I dream that I’m kissing a man. Sometimes he’s tall. Sometimes he’s broad. Sometimes he’s dark. Sometimes he’s rough. Mostly, he’s sweet. He’s gentle. He’s funny. My hair, though, is always long and brown. Even in my dreams, there is no other version of me who is kissing a man.…

By Mickey Stosser   And he said “I’m sorry” And then he left And then I’m left Standing there wondering what to do next   My first thought is to run to you While my limbs are still holding on by a thread But it’s not the first time And it won’t be the last…

By Karla Whitmore   Soon, between winter and full bloom spring this tree will reach the peak of its ascent outdoing promise at planting, thought a shrub it billowed like an Edwardian lady’s hat in stately wallpaper green dotted with puffball flowers bedecked in lorikeets or autumn berries, purple and replete another space in tribal…

By Karla Whitmore   What I’ll miss is the envelope of green that bears the cycle of the seasons trees, shrubs and flowering stems a constancy of summer autumn winter spring I’ll miss walking my suburban streets passing through cloistered eucalypt trunks in the park where children laugh on swings and off leash dogs fuelled…

By Wendy J. Dunn   They came from the stars ‘Who lived here?’ they asked. ‘What happened to them?’   They explored awed by beauty under a blue, clean sky Butterflies flittered by them as if with jewelled wings birds twittered their dawn songs welcoming a new day.   The ruins of countless tall buildings…

By Karla Whitmore sounds quaint now in the language minefield mix still, there’s something inexorable about bare-faced logic like water that relieves its load by turning land to sea too many times to be a normal cycle land that burns from undergrowth to canopy challenges tradition of fire-managed habitat while red hot peat rivals Zarathrusta’s…

By Erin Jamieson   a cramped auditorium with sticky budget seats a mother holding a baby ho glares at me as if to say why are you still here?   heads dusted with stage lights I see him: black suit warm brown eyes, the hint of a smile he has not shown me for quite some…

By Jena Woodhouse   She is seated on a chair upholstered in worn tapestry, cerulean and turquoise with a terracotta foil. She is worn and softened in her contours like the furniture; the quiet light from a window falls on her, a see-through comforter.   Near her on the floor a cylinder of earthenware ablaze with…

By Wendy J. Dunn   Centuries ago Porphyrus wrote: “A threshold is a sacred thing.” I think the sacredness of the threshold is the fire of imagination where a creator is consumed surrenders self to emerge again reborn.   Each act of creation is akin to finding courage to enter Hades and to find your…

By Jane Frank Part of me hovers in icy harbour air. Beyond the skein  of streets, the peak glows orange.  Love just is  and we happen to be in the path of it. I walk for a long  time, trawlers cutting through silk,  drawn to the red crosses  of Dark Mofo. I photograph the moon,…