Poetry

Images I can't Unsee

Too many images I can’t unsee;I feel like my heart is being stabbed and squeezed they killing my people every day overseas how you shoot a child while he’s begging to breathe

"I Can't Breathe in Gaza"

labour labour labour

Coroner's Findings

So the woman’s dream is, by their and...

Longitudinal Study

Data is extractable and its valence changes. Precarity in relationship > when we are situated in relationship to circumstance > when others situate us in relationship causall...

Quarantine gardening

You can’t tell if your family gave up growing vegetables. Your Mum, gazing over, wishes for peaches. Our turmeric/sage/ parsley (the talking herb we call it in our family la...

Auctioneering

If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it. Anne Carson   You take photos of the auction, the world's straightest Mardi Gras. They fill the str...

Anitya

Inspired by the Tamil saying, “மாற்றம் ஒன்றே மாறாதது”( matrum ondrae maaraathathu ) Translation: Change is the only unchangeable thing     The bird sits alone, Waiting, a...

At One with the Precariat Sitting Outside

, at some lunch table not a desk at the University of Sydney , smoking on campus which is definitely illegal now , opening up my old student email account , to discover two weeks a...

Today (Impending)

Blood orange sun burning and tar melts under peach haze while house sails obscure in custard winds coughing hacking strangling to breathe and soft fur faces are singed and bloodied...

Algorithm

stood before an automated door that refused to acknowledge my existence I thought but I’m here   & yes I do remember when time online was less anxious—not a threat to national ...

‘Panorama’ ‘The Political Alabaster’ ‘Administrative Disaster’

Panorama Blackness is a pleasure. I can imagine the long line of women who look like me & wonder where their bodies end & mine begins. Flesh of chocolate A face checked by ...

Sunday Night Trysts

Our days of rest are passed in silent prayer Before the promise of our teenage courtship Convinces us to do away with care And sees us come together, lip to lip. Within his bed and...

Crisis

This is no time of crisis. Crisis is a tempest roving shore to shore Not gentle rain on subtle tour. A crisis forges sickles for every Soul. Scoops up the seconds, craves every hou...

Together

Draw me a picture of mountains, child. Sketch creatures, trees, flowers, butterflies and birds flying, swept high by winds in wild skies. Together, we will name these denizens of n...

antistudy

antistudy these days suggest economy 10 to six five & a half days; read widely but with sycophant calculation in order ‘not to fail’ this, don’t sit too long on this bench cons...

Location Location Location

A shifting margin pivots on desire to assimilate under the purview of theorists who say the goodies are for the earning . Publishing is your real estate.   Texts incise – a coll...

[fʌk]

“ffffffffffffff.” Fricative relationship between us. “ffffffffffffff.” Like my grades then; fourteen’s a difficult age. “ffffffffffffff.” Filial defiance, common among boys. “fffff...

Pedagogic Dissonance

Welcome to our university, where you will experience the best education the world can offer. Our focus on teaching excellence, and our endeavour to provide you learning tailored to...

Knights In The Garden

Much clanking in the rhododendrons, knights in the garden Black knights, white knights, knights of the haiku table Goes at pashing and tableaux of Glenrowan, garden knights Much en...

Maralinga

Between 1952 and 1963, British forces dropped nine nuclear weapons and nine thermonuclear weapons between Woomera and the Western Australian border, within contamination distance o...

Resignation Syndrome

The nation turns its face towards the wall and does not see the dying child. But she is here. She lies amongst the flowers that spread their seas of blue across suburban gardens. H...

For Car

Dear soft rubber,            hard metal dress me: one part at a time interject with vani...

Reflections from Manus and Nauru

The following artworks, writing, poetry and music come from four asylum seekers...

The hands have memory

What else have I dreamt of, waking in twisted sheets as the blue dawn walks the slope at the end of our beach? The hands have memory, the breath too. In the sky, a letter in cloud,...

Goulburn Hospital

Goulburn Hospital The women of my family end up in hospital beds Surrounded by the people they spend their lives looking after It’s not meant to be ironic But it feels strange Our ...

L

Walking the dog up the track through the gums and kangaroos, down through suburbs crawling into the morning. The dog (a dingo cross?) browses the roo poo, which people think gross ...

Two Poems

Well Then Introduce Myself to Me If you – happen to consider yourself female. And you are, alone at midnight (Tuesday morning) It can be good practice to strip down naked          ...

We’ve Left the University

We’ve left the university I walked out wearing my red flag around my shoulders You left wearing a beret, chanting: ‘The workers, united, will never be defeated’   We left As t...

Lonsdale Street

A few messages later and there’s Ten or twenty of us in a park near Braddon, armed with banners and badges, a megaphone, desperation and rage. We’ve tried everything else years in ...

On a remark of Wittgenstein’s

“If I had planned it, I should never have made the sun at all… And if there were only the moon there would be no reading and writing.” A metaphor is a sign of weakness she says the...

Waiting for Now

Most relationships are not without conflict or worry, and navigating these issues is entirely normal and healthy. That said, some factors may be beyond the control of those within ...

People ask me what’s it like living in New Zealand

It’s a beautiful place a lot of Americans are eyeing like the Martians in  War of the Worlds, to layer over with silos; end of the world condominiums where lighting is utmost to co...

from

it took a cutting of my skin by a mouthful of teeth–   from two places    [it came] fixed     margin by margin; hold cities under breast neither could swallow it like the daff...

Three Poems

Soul You have not earned the right to use this word, a white professor said to the Persian girl as he ran his eye over her poem.  And filled with shame (at her own presumption) she...

Our girls

The radio alarm this morning leaked a slow dark stain. Some deaths are quick and almost fine. These have caused the stars to reel in pain. Take my morning cup of Earl Grey tea, tak...

‘Beached Whale and Skyscraper’: Two Poems

‘Hostel’: A Poem by Rachel Kirk

The darkness in the room is ripe and heavy, giving off the heady scent of bodies, breathing. In another language only breathing sounds the same. I shift an arm and she moves too, m...

‘Out of Sight’

The rails shriek over here Pass silver-eyed birch bordering lush cornfields, defining amber wheat.   Hey Maria, in the northern forests, pines tall and trim, are well-kept lik...

Nina Simone

https://player.vimeo.com/video/169194953 Writer and performer: Gabriela Falzon Director and Cinematographer: Adam Thomas  

Progression

Bricks of antiquity flaking mortar and dust of Adam’s bones wherein words encrust modern day ballads, cheap songs echo in search of a god to enslave and here it stays as times new ...

Political Science

Yes, Let’s! Lets A-politicise all that became somehow political. Until the politics is taken out of politics And the underground of revolution becomes a gathering of silent bodies....

Needle Grass

this city does not care for me i am nothing to her cold indifference as if you never left as if i never learned but i have heard out there somewhere someone...

College, Collagen, Collision

Photograph by Johannes Dietschi...

Two Poems by Rozhdestvensky in English for the First Time

– Translated by Louis Klee...

up up up outta town

Let’s go hiking man, I need to go hiking he said to me. I suddenly agreed thinking that everyone needs to get outta town, sometimes. So we sped down the road out out out to wilsons...

I am a Feminist

I am a feminist. I have a powerful body made of solidarity, Built on the strength of our call for justice, Found through the fists of time, Silenced by constant exploitation. I am ...

The OED Definition of Love

He is thirty-five centimetres taller than I am. I want to love and fly, I tell him, when we are naked for the first time. (He is the first boy to see me naked). Sunday afternoon pl...

The Syntax of Space

Four Postulates

Rapture

That child’s hand above your head; the hand of a little girl long dead. Kakadu. Djidpi Djidpi. Two blocks of ochre. One grinding hollow. A grinding stone. Five moments of pressure....

Verboten

I didn’t see the trucks pull up. An odd cargo was not unloaded overnight. There haven’t been any inexplicable disappearances. Those were not strangers in town. I received no unusua...

Manifesto

Manifesto Comrade, Comrade, Can you feel the revolutionary foment? The fog of ideology is lifting from our eyes – let us complete our historical mission!​ We listened on with equal...

Nothing Breeds Nothing

THREE There were trees outside when they arrived. One day, he sliced everything down. There’s only quiet, filling the room until she’s choking – she used to hide it better but it’s...

Poetry For Fighting (They Say)

Held-square, something un-defined above sets short bare legs running. A grey metal shod cane keeps one man from fighting but not from war. Lone family sedan stopped at curb has eye...

Cockroachery

No evidence that cockroaches tell time by the large plain face of the clock we bought from Kmart to replace the clock that fell and smashed my cobalt teacups. At the same hour ever...

Two Poems

Ascending  Loving your scrutiny, Agreeing with your Calculated appraisal, This conversation Is a staged renovation Of my crumbling insides. You aspire towards Beauty And frown at m...

Reclamation

I can’t deny how much I already feel this. But my focus refuses direction, won’t be blinked into moistened clarity. Muffled by a hum, just behind my ears. Whispering hushed tales o...