States of Poetry QLD
'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 ...
How fine it is to mutiny
against my tired mind—
say self, you are through,
to smash into a mirrorball
of echoes all scaled
in dizzying Nordic blue
feel the universe tilt
and infinitely rebuild
to flicker
like a skerrick of spindle silver
needle-quick,
and never be held—
this is the freedom
of the uni ...
'Quetzalcoatl' by Sarah Holland-Batt | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
—for Vera Pavlova, in Mexico City
On the bus to Teotihuacan, we turn
a new god's name on our tongues
like a charm, jagging past
cinderblocked hills
chocked over the motorway,
grey pixels stacked so high they merge
with the smoked white Mexican sky—
then a guitar player in the aisle
begins a song whose only familiar
wo ...
'Lapis Lazuli/Sketches from the Nile' by Sarah Holland-Batt | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
I.
You tilt lapis to your lip –
a day light as wicker.
By the water, bullrushes bow
into sailboat blue, lace-necked
egrets fossick and pick,
and the elements rearrange
a goliath heron's skull to mud.
Up on the embankment
a crouching child scratches
his name into a temple wall.
II.
Ultramarine, lapis lazuli—
'Koala Trees Turn Her Borobi' by Lionel Fogarty | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
She was pretty young Borobi being put in the tree by her human father for four hours.
As he walk back to the other Jarjum, they ask where Borobi was. He say, Oh she jump
into a tree wanting to eat leaves and looked like happy, so I let her be what she wanted
to be, a Borobi.
Many Bilin Bilin flirted around flying high and low seems like listen to old Kargaru sing
Can I say
white people really bore me sometimes
to be exact
I grow tired with what's unmentioned
idling in surf club bathrooms
nothing wrong with the chips
but they're talking about Tasmania
my thoughts haunted by islands
maybe I'm dying
I've too many chips
teeth like stones
take me to be flossed
and cleaned
I need new soles
...
'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< ...
Woman
the real sea snoring half a mile away
the scrubbed brick walls of the double lounge and its
samples of african drums flood the speakers
Is that your shadow, weightless,
a smudge of grey dust
in the black trickery of the she-oak?
the ...
... it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
—Sylvia Plath, 'A Birthday Present'
Here's some activity you may have missed:
pompadour-lure hung three days after I
disentangle.
'It misses me.'
The fourth: A ...
Nan's budgerigar,
cat fed squeezing like the morning
fog between oxidized barbed
wire and gorse
with an older cousin
with a slug gun
booting sheep skulls
stripped by gusts, our fathers'
1950s snares swooped by plovers,
daring: 'yellow spurs! forearms
up!' shooting star-
lings for laughs