For parts i - iii click here (iv) This mirror, a gift from him, the carved frame finger-softened “It's in the classic style” he says. Spotless glass blank-faced, I can see her cherubs smirking in the cornices. “Look! A beautiful portrait!” Words bounce in and out from mouth to mouth as he sets his reflection … Continue reading Snowite (Parts iv – viii)
From the point-of-view of the Step-Mother (i) It begins in a red-lit pub glazed with cigarette-smoke. He sits alone, eyes hung brown thick with the gravy of old love. The froth on his beer is drying a watery ring hugs the bottom of his glass. He does not tell me of his daughter her beauty … Continue reading Snowite (Parts i-iii)
Slim and slick, as stick of cinnamon. Like segmented silk, your scales slip off in shimmering shuck. I discover your skin in skeins of grasses silver and slinky and flimsy as fuss. I see you slither so stately, strangely un-shamed by your undressed state. Smooth disclosure of sensuous sides is simply standard snakelore. How I … Continue reading Body Confidence
In seashell crevice I have perspired or shivered, wound up tight under the gristle of my own fearful odour - the stink of mortality’s bell tolling and tolling singeing reverberations. All around me the huddle of love and yet still I felt a loner time's slowest ripples inching Today at last my buttoned grip slipped … Continue reading Relief
My reflection is under threat like a bilby or a platypus. Sightings are getting rarer. In photos there’s a me I don’t remember with long legs and short shorts and shoes without socks before the spiders came and spun blue webs around my calves in thickly knotted thread Back then I dyed my hair (even … Continue reading My Reflection
I am awake watching gaps in leaves seeing woolly mammoths those creatures of the past, preserved in ice and mud I must not wallow like them for ten thousand years but leap up and shake myself celebrate the fallen crystals shattering about my toes This is my truth penned like knife strips through a canvas … Continue reading Insomnia
Morning musked eyeballs - the cadence of a poor night's sleep I shower, relieved to see night unbending, the hot rush of pink across my skin and the way the water tickles my ears A heroic sun finds footing between black-busted hills to be picked through by bare-armed trees and a caveat of clouds in … Continue reading Good Friday
It's Wednesday night and in homes across the catchment children are asked to "keep it down" while one parent finds a hidey hole which pretends to be an office for another COVID19 P&C meeting on time, on track and on budget on Skype The topic is the school fete beset by 1.5 metre problems and … Continue reading P&C Revolution
Reading a book to my kids with a bit about Greta Thunberg I start thinking about all the tomorrows that never came and it's as breaking as the friend who never calls or the seed that never grows no matter the love no matter the love * All those kids holding hands around the equator … Continue reading No Matter the Love
the vestiges of a secret galaxy in repose woven between the strong, still arms of the oak tree and by the spider's nimble spindles and peopled with the confetti stars of last night's shower i could not hope for a more exact comfort
it's the crunch when two spaces collide it's the neck-jerk the shock when you know you've been invaded from here in the mirror she's just a big black bull bar zoomed in close like a nose-to-nose threat but then we dismount and she's just a woman like me just a woman making a mistake on … Continue reading In the Back
in my child body i swam in the brown swirl of dam water, mud, and eels' whiskers and the temperature comforted or plunged around me - the shock of it - so i wriggled to action seeking comfort again not knowing where in my adult body i'm again adrift at the mercy of wafting shocks … Continue reading Like Swimming in a Dam
the gurus conduct - fingers circle hover prod like batons screens slip, slide and rotate obediently there should be accompanying chords: dramatic and aching; or light, trippy ecstatic but i bend over like an unhappy witch with a cauldron that won't bubble i stoke the fire in all those weird 21st Century ways unplug reboot … Continue reading iPad Blues
A billion years ago I must've swallowed a star just a tiny one with pointy edges occasionally prickly but also a lucky birth light carrying and carried all this time - presumed eternal. Last night it burst - all the shards of it pressing into the extremes of my torso sputtering and flickering the painful … Continue reading Star Burst
Inspired by this story: ABC News this mud, you say, came from yonder creek all frothing brown tea and gentle chatter among cicada's fierce racket and spearing acacia this mud, you say, wandered in 18,000 years ago on the feet of wasps, as busily they tessellated their bulbous home, 3D printing on this shaggy wall … Continue reading Mud from a Chattering Creek
there's a great saying in Croatian "aku nemash u glavi imash u nogama" basically it means if you don't have it in the head you must have it in the legs i mean, just today, i put the chooks away and then had to run back later to get the chook bucket and make sure … Continue reading Brain / Feet Interactions
Just as the galaxy hurls interstellar objects past our telescopes in teasing hint of what else may be today a secret was thrown in my window a mystery chunk all glittered up with the shock of its smashing the note said "Guardian of this rock seek not its true owner for ye shall spread great … Continue reading The Secret
On my phone, I am great at the typo and a poor editor. So when I write notes or ideas on my phone, some interesting text emerges when I come back to it hours or days later. This poem is attempting to have fun with some of those errors. The morning is cool - a … Continue reading Captain Raven
Sometimes luxury is as simple as a window with green outside i look past the couch to the many-tinctured leaves and am grateful and i realize that greenery (plant-life) is not incidental or purely aesthetic it doesn't have to be scientific or environmental it is eye-medicine as well as ALL those other things it is … Continue reading Green is My Breath
washed up like seaweed, writhed and swept; curled into herself on grit and fear; a body embattled. she rises pale from the sand, eyes like luminescent plums holding steady against the storm’s furious exhale but at her back another wave; an angry stampede of tumbled elements buckling her knees. *** she plunges forward through furious … Continue reading Resilience
It's an occasion everyone looking top-notch tables and waiters everywhere and lots of people from my past. My best friend from primary school looks great in a pixie hair cut and a shapeless orange dress, her lips slightly goldened but we smile across each other our eyes like repellent magnets never touching sight. Another friend … Continue reading When Dreams Untie
The day's heat speared into dirt gusted under bushes tidied away in diagonal white formations of rain * After the storm the dim jewels blink in the grey promising catharsis
Artwork 'An Uncommon Vision' by Nick Reeves This poem is in response to the EIF Poetry Challenge #15 posed by Ingrid entitled "Ekphrastic" in which we are asked to write a poem "telling the story" in the artwork. Boarding School Story I know why you cry. The drizzle paints lines like a prison’s bars and … Continue reading EKPHRASTIC
a child's stubby pointer crest of sand beneath the nails reaching stroking soft as mango flesh but putri malu is coy her feathered leaf recoils tight as a fist and the tiny flower maid curtsies apologetically on the beach the softest wave curls greenly under hunching and afraid the warm ocean breeze whispers "too shy. … Continue reading Shy Princess
without my camera I’m not equipped to catch the milky blue in both leaf and distant puddle the naked pink glow of the gums' undressing the way the mountains breathe so wetly green and the small clouds hover a child’s picture ** I focus on other senses two small pigeons barking softly like puppies (even … Continue reading walking the dog
cram into a coolamon feel the tuck the grain and writhe the surge of ancient sap contort like a treble clef into the loops and dangles of self criticism concentric rings smaller ever smaller winding in with melancholy's suck consumed to the very centre the heartwood and there: tears may seep darkening like blood slowly … Continue reading Gloom
early morning cockatoos wheel with paintbrush wings dyeing the sky white hot! hot! they screech the gum leaf tips glint ominously
i am here every day, folks here like a clock ticking and ticking some days i feel useful measuring out the time in careful dollops of mash mixed veg, of course don't waste opportunities get it down 'em i am here every day, folks answering questions i sometimes don't even know if I've understood i'm … Continue reading School Holidays
full full as a plum stuffed by time and ripely red juice which stains like blood smears and sticks on skin or fabric when split bitten and broken the teeth of life raw pain ruptured burst and weeping shallow heartstone its fringe of flesh clinging, imploring in the pitiless heat and heavy tread of the … Continue reading Broken
Out of the Cave 