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Helen Jarvis 18/12/24 Helen Jarvis 18/12/24

Washing my mother’s hair – by Helen Jarvis

My mother bends her head over the basin. Her skull is frail
as a scrap of bird’s egg, and I cover the tap with my hand to cushion it.
Hair spreads out red in the water: the red that was once the shade
of the carp in old Japanese woodblocks; the red that skipped me

Cameron Lowe 27/11/24 Cameron Lowe 27/11/24

Friesland Farm under red clouds – by Cameron Lowe

Curiously

it was

ships

on fire

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson 13/11/24 Anna Kerdijk Nicholson 13/11/24

Dementia – by Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

My friend again loses a word,

momentarily absents herself,

staring at her meaning as if struck

by holiness, by her gilded icons

Megan Cartwright 31/10/24 Megan Cartwright 31/10/24

Visitor Ghazal – by Megan Cartwright

In its practised temperance the monks’ routine compels sleep –

yet in this land I have no language; I cannot spell sleep.

Outsider – conspicuous. I imitate reverence.

I count sheep. In the dark my heart pounds like a death knell: sleep.

Bobby K 14/10/24 Bobby K 14/10/24

1. – by Bobby K

Jake and Sarah are crying

their chickens

are dying of heatstroke

but I don’t care about that

Sam Morley 22/8/24 Sam Morley 22/8/24

The Ascension on a MacBook Air – by Sam Morley

I come to the backlit blue

saying nothing

a silent sermon

with stinging eyes

asking:

is there something more than material things?

Michael Farrell 14/8/24 Michael Farrell 14/8/24

The Edit / An Edit – by Michael Farrell

Immanence redirected. The infrastructure of the edgelord and the snowflake are the same.

Can power be generally oppressive? Up in the trees, radically outside the gift economy, radically outside bricolage. Read this sentence. Read this sentence linguistically. Tampering mid-ride.

Shey Marque 7/8/24 Shey Marque 7/8/24

Dysesthesia – by Shey Marque

There was a burning of skin

in the dermatome under my left arm,

& I was changing

into a long white cotton gown

with ties in the back

Anders Villani 24/7/24 Anders Villani 24/7/24

Dinner Call – by Anders Villani

You’re playing Age of Empires.

Your settlement, still new, in its dawn, glows

at the bottom of the screen like a starving

Coonara’s embers. The rest is black.

Andrew Sutherland 3/7/24 Andrew Sutherland 3/7/24

‘Helen’ by Euripides – by Andrew Sutherland

Desire poems are an empty

a discarded mirror

Love poems are a gleaming

com and the rom

Just so you are aware: I have a double

out there. A god-made simulacra; cloud.

Alice Allan 21/6/24 Alice Allan 21/6/24

white nonsense – by Alice Allan

‘our heart is unquiet
it can find no rest’

Listen to Alice Allan reading her new poem, ‘white nonsense’.

Natalie Susak 19/6/24 Natalie Susak 19/6/24

Telegram – by Natalie Susak

In this language / I am trying / to carve / a home / for us.

This old wind / raises my hair / to my face / grazes the hair / of my arm.

Molim, I say, the way / they taught me / with tongue stopped / at the end.

I hate / to beg, but / when I search for words / I call to them / as if over

Mitch Cave 19/6/24 Mitch Cave 19/6/24

new year’s day – by Mitch Cave

we eat on mute ice

melting in the sink

and i forget how i am

shaped like a door knuckle

Jill Jones 19/6/24 Jill Jones 19/6/24

Advice and Warnings – by Jill Jones

Cover your heels
Keep unpicking what you sew
Beyond the known world is a busy place for failures

Don’t visit abandoned theme parks with your parents
Never call anything by its right name
Never look back at love

Svetlana Sterlin 9/4/24 Svetlana Sterlin 9/4/24

If Movement Were a Language: Triptych – by Svetlana Sterlin

no one would be as fluent as us / swimmers. gliding through what we know as air

density augmented. our shoulders feel / brunt of gym tiles Dad and i flipped /

onto faded patchwork carpet. i still remember / miniature brick pattern of black

and grey. now hidden beneath those tiles / does our presence haunt them, woven

Jo Ward 20/3/24 Jo Ward 20/3/24

Posture – by Jo Ward

I mean I’m clearly not disabled,

I tell my doctor, smiling. It’s true

I haven’t washed my own hair

in nearly a year, but I am well.

Anna Jacobson 20/3/24 Anna Jacobson 20/3/24

23 vignettes on the rental crisis – by Anna Jacobson

1. When I move in, the manager stands in my room. He says it’s important for me to be quiet. His gaze fixes on the wall, trying to appease whoever is on the other side.

2. Someone told me that people go missing here – that my street is the Bermuda Triangle of Brisbane. Today was the first day my lips started tasting like metal. I think it’s stress.