I wait, four curtains distant, eyelids guard my memories: her in dusk’s clothing, beauty like the clean evening mist that hangs from lavender’s tips, never to rust. There’s power in fading away... Rust, it’s silent, inevitable journey from skin to heart. But I clean and clean, preserving beauty, love framed with the gnarled timbre of … Continue reading I Wait
a crackle of cockatoos & deafening smoke feathers take on the gore flint sharp, the white-hooked scream Written for Sarah's dVerse poetics. "the 4 elements"
Daisy Days Come with me now, to the gate where the mist holds court on the driveway. And together we’ll remember the time you left with a goodbye, casual as daisies. You never came back. As the weeks passed, I swirled down down into the dark soil, looking for you where worms feed and the … Continue reading #dVerse Prosery
On a Pristine Beach They're sipping happiness from tins on this clean beach. And the sizzle of barbecue mixes with high-belly laughs. A nest of their rubbish glints like human crustacea on the gathering histories of sea creatures. She watches two of them judo the way nude bears might hug, smell each other’s fear. Meanwhile, … Continue reading #dVerse Prosery (144 words)
Ron Hicks Unwanted our child my belly and you list losses... tears of griffins couldn’t salt my heart like your face now blank as the steel sky oh grant me some bloody sun Written for K. Hartless' Petite Pen Ekphrasis - Ron Hicks' artwork and Misky's Twiglet #283 (steel sky)
Emma Femi P. A necklace of goldfish wrappedlike cord - my pillowed chin -hang me in the streammy bubblesannounce my sentenceto the stars written in response to K Hartless' Petite Pen (image found by K. Hartless)
From Visual Verse Anthology At the wall, Ruano found peace. Ruano found peace in the way lines met and intersected: bricks and pallets the darkness after matter... and that water pipe fending off the sky. "Shelter is a feeling," Ruano knew, and felt himself hugged by the wet smell and the shuffing of somebody’s plastic … Continue reading Ruano’s Matter
"Joshua Smith" by William Dobell After William Dobell's Painting Supposing him to be her superior was a bad start to any interview and, like a school ma’am on picnic day, she gathered herself into her face imagining the square root of herself emanating, dark and precise, from eyes as piercing as the tines of a … Continue reading Meeting with a Lawyer
rain hangs like sifted chalk under park lights, still as drama the stage is set: dancers, strung like puppets from a drop-down sky black cat-suits two dimensional against luminescent green jewel-glint & risque poses only bedraggled bark ribbons give the trees away thunder applauds Written for Whimsygizmo's dVerse Quadrille - a 44 word poem including … Continue reading Night Act #Quadrille 150
Napowrimo #10 "she's a doormat" up-end that slap me down concrete flat and coarse like chuck beef nicely marbled with fact and it’s this: I will clean your boots and eat your feet but hurt I’ve got fibre the gristle in your teeth (you don’t complain about the flavour) beef sinew through a microscope is … Continue reading Alter Ego
(A Glosa) In the garden of woven shadows, Wessel in coveralls and me, sowing bulbs, knees plugged with mud thicker than my own wadded guilt. Today in my heart, salvation has compost breath as I dig in soil’s decadent scrimmage, head down. Wessel’s remarks barely crest the flourishing alyssum but when I turn to see … Continue reading At the Feet of Roses
(after Ron Pretty's Poem "Four Hands") drunk on melody: the music school’s broad halls edged with slouching squares of light shared that rippling lucid treble. I saw the river in window-glint the flash of trout - their spangled dance, and my cheeks swam with pink, remembering the way you annexed my hand, sowing warmth generous … Continue reading Schubert, Love & the Trout Quintet
Image by Narelle Autio - prize winning Australian Photographer A Pantoum the shark alarm rang, fat fear doused my skin in peridot water, soft toes clench sand I race my bow wave in water’s prison my ears ring such thunder- a blood based band in peridot water, soft toes clench sand ‘neath angry sky, constabulary … Continue reading Peridot Grim
Artwork by Sir Sidney Nolan we’re all shadows here strung flat and powerless under that searing whip of blue you can see where the land has rusted shrugging sunsets into itself heat upon rabid heat such patriotic decay windmills like stark flowers measure decades in their browning and their screech (skinned metal) bleeds into every … Continue reading After Nolan
For reasons they don’t understand the puddle by the gate never dries up and the frogs knee-deep all through the summer Hetty likes to squat tiny bottom almost in the water watching the squiggle of life, silent as first light. In a bucket in the laundry Hetty is feeding caterpillars. Nat says it’s hard to … Continue reading Hetty
the park breathes fogging morning’s windowpane: chiffon and light, a lemon slice dispelling yellow we'll dip gratefully into autumn doona deep our faces smoothed by the chill air a contrail in pink wallpapers the middle distance with kisses i'm counting galahs before you wake Quadrille written for dVerse Whimsy Gizmo's "Papered Poems"
Hush wild stars! Your silver glow attracts thieves... cowboys are priming their astral lassos - their hats cast ten gallon shadows. But the moon waits, sheriff badge bright. So stop your flames! Written for dVerse (2 prompts) March 10 - the tetractys - Ray Stebbing’s eponymous form which is a triangular syllabic of 1;2;3;4;10. and … Continue reading Star Rustlers
We bent wire, looping and tying. Lantern skeletons sprouted like line drawings and then bold paper shades of floating persimmons. The river gleamed reptilian in darkness spotted with tea lights. I couldn't see your eyes just sails of light bobbing and hueing and the small gods their shimmering reflections Written for Twiglet #266
When the Earth was very young, on a river flat in a glade between stands of fir trees, Punce Nin began digging. Stubby fingers raked at soil among strips of fragrant green. His nose twitched. His hand made contact with something, encircled the shuckable globe of it. He examined it, brushing away dirt and his … Continue reading The Onion
in the shower, she enjoys singing notes larking and spurling twisting curlicues escape the window men pass by: smart suits, thin ties and see the steam with its ride of melody they hear hair like rivers running satin and creamy shoulders bare as sunshine and hip bones wrapped in peach skin they picture fringed eyes, … Continue reading Twiglet #264
sculling morning air the cool flap of it wet-sheet snick at my neck I pull on my hood in the east a huge candle is rising the great round nub blunt as thuggery shooting light like sky wharves & white fug ferries docked between trees bird engines, frisson & enflapment shrieks & eerie laughter wings … Continue reading Wilding the Morning
we dandelions we heard the storm coming those first threads of rain were real slow reminded us of caterpillars munching wet little noises and the squeamishness of leaves but then bongo practise started like the blundering of snails all boo and brow and beaters foot stamp and phooey it was waking up the river she's … Continue reading moonish and whathow
Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird TrapBy Pieter Breughel the Younger - http://www.antiques.com.pl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12429232 jack daws beep and chatter knowing our insignificant flying the feeble flags of scarves in noon's fish-eyed pallor the houses stand starched snow hats white as boiled lollies dimly reflected in jaundiced ice underneath I’m conscious fish are watching … Continue reading thinking of fish
The bed looks blue, like cold lips and so still, clothes tucked ‘round; the kitchen, its tiny yellow kettle and fridge that grumbles all night long; and her mother’s chair, the dents for buttocks and head just resting… always in the coarse weave of floral chintz. Those roses on the upholstery stay alive, while vases … Continue reading April
I thought you were mad when you topped up your jam pot with stars mixing them in with apricot nights such twinkling on my tongue and in your Huckleberry grin Written for Twiglet #263 "you're mad"
She doesn’t miss him, him and his aeronautical ideas about romance calling nights out their ailerons (subtle adjustments for flight control). She doesn’t miss him always ordering tea; loving sharing the pot; the way his glasses steamed up when he drank; the way his left ear moved just a little when he smiled. She pokes … Continue reading Never on Tuesdays
When the bulldozer came for our house we sewed signs into the windows that said “panegyric government perpetuating poverty” and the great machine purred there like a cat contemplating a lizard’s tail. Then a bloke yelled from the driver’s seat “What does it mean?” and we yelled back “Look it up in the dictionary!” He … Continue reading In the Way of Progress
songs and carrots and the tiny problems her children whispered such hot condensation in her ear the every day of dinner like crabs scuttling to nip at her heels and shopping lists and the way the laundry door never quite shut and her hatred of umbrellas and how she saw them as lightning conductors and … Continue reading All that she carried…
on thursday you wear pink and the snails march one-footed antennae bayonet high we link our thumbs swearing on Mummy’s "Encyclopaedia of Bulbs" as we lay flowers on the graves of the thrice-consumed lettuces the little geranium glows amongst its green plate leaves and we drink red cordial and draw crosses in the dirt Written … Continue reading the funeral
today a woman went mad in the supermarket pigeon eyes flapping a whirrrr like card decks shivering into place not staring quite onlookers understated as grey weather through the feathers and coughing nobody knew what to do the pink skin of panic it was in the cereal aisle colourful boxes boasting fibre, energy and plastic … Continue reading The Truth about Shopping
Out of the Cave 