States of Poetry Series One
'Buffalo Milk' by Ellen van Neerven | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Suck until you burn the room
and the heat numbs
reduced to a sound
wet
like the come and go
of the ocean
water enters
my hand in your hair
my hand
if you leave me childless
this will be yours alone
these marks you make
openings, persuasions
of the woman I will become
Ellen van Neerven
'Bricks and Lightning' by Ellen van Neerven | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
It seems I'm always walking
into the scene of a crime
moustached copper
and fuck-off tape
don't look too closely
you won't be able to sleep
I'm new to this building
I live now by the river where
the ducks look like shoes
in the water
I go to the department store
we used to frequent
I look at grocery receipts
to see how I'm saving< ...
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
Your kind friend sent a condolence card
and in the envelope a small white feather
which, she said, seemed to come from nowhere.
Angel's wings obviously, I wrote in my reply.
And for days after everywhere I went
I found small replicas, as if some tiny
feathered thing had scattered its moulting
on urban pavements, in shops and unlikely
bathrooms, a ...
Without bucket or spade we build
the sandcastle, dragging and gathering
piling and patting our little Camelot.
I excavate a moat, shape a drawbridge,
a sloping road leading to the keep,
while you look for shells to decorate
the edifice, or so I thought, the way we'd
done last holiday some months ago.
But this time you have another purpose:
instead of ...
Some months after the funeral,
checking emails from the other hemisphere,
there's one from Pauline; subject: Hell.
It's not promising. My mind traverses
the last five years, their litany of loss –
a son, two friends and mentors,
then you, lovely sister, and like some grim
comedic postscript even Frankie
the cat succumbed. Suffice to say
I ...