States of Poetry
The particulars of the evening being, whether consciously
evoked or – 'a great shemozzle'
as Kent said –
merely one day washing over and into the depths
& ...
The ‘greate fyshe’, terrible
colossus, dark cathedral of days
and nights, arrests
lost Jonah in his flight. Three
days and nights spent
in wet earnest pray ...
States of Poetry 2016 - New South Wales | 'Mouse (Wunderkammer)' by Kate Middleton
Cut out a sixth of the heart.
At a day old—furless,
close-eyed, resembling nothing
so much as an infant's thumb—
he can survive it.
The mouse can regrow that missing part
in three short weeks.
Aesop knew it:
to be mouse-hearted
is as good as wearing
the swagger of lion.
His heart
perhaps the size of ...
In black chalk the beast
brusques forward Silence Rubens
has stopped his mouth
with a single line He is already
awed by the den
he will find himself in even now
as his mane curls into wisp
of emptiness A study on paper
But there in white chalk the grim
pose brightens
into ...
1
The sound of shovels scraping
gravel, voices
of men – the night's
heat
clinging still –
Awake to this, or
swimming
yet in sleep
you mumble –
A fly
is walking
on your forehead
2
'Ten thousand women
an ...
The grass grows longer on the easeway.
A pelican swipes the sky
towards the seascape we can't yet see,
its webby legs outstretched:
& ...
The carpet could be cleaner –
so could the world.
There's too much cayenne
in the soup.
The grand abstraction
is one approach
to the poem, I guess –
so too the eye
of the flea.
I can't even taste
the vegetables.
And love?
Mosquitoes are circling
the light globe –
Norma, dead now
a month. And
after we cast the ...
Perhaps the best cells are the ones we can't kill off,
a persistence of the fittest, although mutation's
always painful. It's two thousand and fourteen,
and I know no-one who has been
uninjured. It thinks in me,
this shadow. I put on sunscreen, and am surprised
to come in contact with my skin.
In the same day, I'm chatted up in a café
by an aspiring nove ...
'Pastoral / "Asset Management"' by Cameron Lowe | States of Poetry Vic - Series One
winter once more and still
&nbs ...
for Ian
And suddenly:
the men
are holding beers
and standing round
the trampoline,
and not the barbecue;
turning over toddlers,
instead of steaks.
The women
make the salads.
Fiona Wright