States of Poetry
The ground felt like it did when it's about to storm. My feet were brown and my big toe blistered. My grandmother was talking to my grandfather. A wet patch on my grandmother's back. Her hands roping those tails along the fence.
She turned to me and I saw her. Grey. A little heavy. Everything I came here for. A magpie flew lower.
Ellen van Neer ...
'the notebooks of Mr & Mrs Emeritus' by Nathan Shepherdson | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
ironing the crease into her lung with your breath
the six words in end steam over blue charcoal in her eye
your hands arrive in separate envelopes on different days
and they are addressed to each other
even the earth in its eyedropper is not medicine to our mouths
it's the milk dispensed through holes in a flute that keeps us alive
Mr & Mrs Emeritus ...
'statements to forget when remembered' by Nathan Shepherdson | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
no one ha
s ever written
there is no gr
eater poem
than this one
no one ha
s ever written
there is no gr
eater poem
then this one
this poe ...
'the black hand of Badia Elmi' by Nathan Shepherdson | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Nathan Shepherdson
Recording
This poem has not yet been written
and before it is I want to say I respect
the President of the United States,
the man himself and his office
and I respect what the people
mean when they say Democracy
though I do not know what this
might have to do with being armed
and having put these points like this
as plainly as possible
on t ...
You woke with a headache
and opened the bedroom window blind.
You bent forward as morning light came in.
It fell on your belly and breasts
and your sleep maddened hair.
I could hear the sickness in your voice
as you accepted a salad bowl to throw up in
and two pills with breakfast.
The new sun tipped itself up over distant mountains
outside the ki ...
For Marianne J Boruch and David Dunlap
We walk past the ruined past
pasted to the Academy’s cloister walls,
past broken Latin stones’ fracture ...