WA Poets Inc Creatrix 74 Poetry

September 2026

Selectors: Kevin Gillam and Helen Budge

Ananda Barton
————-Dooly (Fog)
Maria Bonar
————-Abraham
Mar Bucknell
————-Otto
Peter Burges
————-fit pickings
Paul Vincent Cannon
————-Dust
Ellie Cottrell
                       The Right to Quiet Enjoyment
Gary Colombo De Piazzi
                       Dark Fall
————- Birdfeeder Ritual
Kevin Gillam
                      the god of betweens
Candy Gordon
————-Ashes
Mike Greenacre
————-Cliff
————-Three Women Painting
Jenifer Hetherington
                       Walyalup, June 13
Ruari Jack Hughes
                       The gaps between the seconds
————- I looked down the road…
Ross Jackson
————-Riverside Western
Beth Kirkland
————-Still water
peter knight
————-You’re dreaming
Veronica Lake
————-Enigma
Mardi May
                      Walking with Hearing Aids
Francesca Meehan
————-Listen to the Shots
Sally Murphy
————-Yarning Circle
Virginia O’Keeffe
————-Fear of Falling
Allan Padgett
                      Defiance as a Category of Being
Chris Palazzolo
                      Orchard
Mike Pedrana
————-jail
————-Anymore
Elena Preiato
————-Seasonal
Phoebe Brown Roberts
————-Two Ants
Barry Sanbrook
————-The Spider
Soulo
————-Murmurations
Amanda Spooner
————-Immersion
Michael Stevens
————-Cala Munda
————-Potato Famine Émigré
Kaitlyn Sun
                       Burning
                       Holding Space
Giles Watson
                      Jacqueline du Pré and Osian Ellis Play Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan’
Gail Willems
                      A Madness of Cats

With
The Swan River,
Shrouded in fog.
Matagarup Bridge
Becomes
A gate to Everywhen.

Perth;
Helena Dance swings her axe,
John Septimus Roe waters his peach tree.

Boorloo;
Yagan hafting his kjtj
Yooreel leaning on her wanna.

Derbarl Yerrigan;
The diprotodon forages by
The primeval river.

Nyitting;
The Waugal shapes the
Primal land.

As
Outlines blur and shift;
All times come together,
In one.

Dianella, 10th July 2026.

Ananda Barton

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_______________________
Abraham

He is a recent, regular addition to the north-facing front
of Officeworks, his grin cheerful as the low, golden rays
of winter sun. Sits cross-legged on the brick paving
his brown face crinkled, steel-grey hair a springy halo
against the royal blue facade. Old-fashioned suit jacket,
cap at his feet. Sings out a greeting to each passerby.

Few people walk past without dropping coins or saying
hello. A tall Somali man, a woman in a hijab, a couple
of hi-vis tradies. One rainy afternoon, I ask his name.
“Abraham – but not Lincoln,” he jokes. I have no change,
give him a note. “I’m goin’ home now,” he says,
stretching his joints, packing up. His smile is a gift.

Maria Bonar

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_______________________
otto

if this frame had no bones
we could reverse engineer
an idea of its poetry

if this heart had no ribs
we could know about its absence
and grieve for our lovings

when these legs lose their ground
s w a y
till the torsion holds us still

these ribs have flown out
to make a vault
a ceiling a sky

the sky is a mirror
refusing to rain
this life is a palindrome

Mar Bucknell

I drift
            if a bag
                      of over-fleshed bones
can be said to drift
                      across hard-packed sands,
                                 past mounds
of kelp Sea’s vomited
                      as gulls
                                 do castings.
And, drifting,
                      muse about wild-
                                 hungry winds,
white-glary clouds
                      thirsty dunes.
                                 About being
hung out to dry
                      beyond Dawn’s
                                 bleaching reaches,
Sky’s roseate runes,
                      Eucalypts’
                                 moody toons.
Being fit
                      for sacrifice
                                 in bushfires
far-wintering Sun
                      will bring
                                 on its return.
For being
                      a once-husked,
                                 now ashed,
long neglected seed
                      Earth will
                                 inhume, process
through Her loamy worms,
                      regurgitate
                                 as a colour-full bloom.

Peter Burges

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_______________________
Dust

Summer lines my mouth with forest ash, a reminder of other lives. Blackboard monitor taste, ghostly white, dusting oﬀ; chalk lines for handball with all the attendant double entendre, same as marbles, there’s no escaping the language we develop around giggles and hands over mouths with whispers out of harms way.

Later came sighs like the tongues of angels but by then we had traversed life’s mountain and returned below the humid clouds to ordinary dryness.

Will the rains come, will they turn the chalk to milky sludge. Will I traverse that mountain again. The earth is dusty, thirsty ….

But I worry that the rains will wash away my memories to the ocean where all memories are held. Will the ocean whisper them back to me?

I’m hanging on to the dust.

Paul Vincent Cannon

“Take note of these things,”
I tell myself.

These mundane
things like

the trinket tray
from my mother

in-law, shaped like
a palm tree, painted

crudely gold, placed
temporarily
on a speaker –

still living there,
months later.

Take note of
this nail polish

bought full price
from Woolworths,

prawn-pink and
shiny, sure

to chip in a
matter
of days.

Take note of
these things,

these mundane
things,

to distract from
the macabre.

To distract from
the news

of everyday
people: dying

just to save
their own
mundane.

Ellie Cottrell

Silence pounds louder than a cannon.
Slinks into crevasses of the mind
to echo the hushed hiss in ears
more accustomed to rumble and crash.

How birds hold their chatter
twitter under silent leaves
and trees—as statues—
lengthen their shadows.

Smell of woodsmoke clings
to the breeze, tumbles memories
and aches in the need to be warm
as brittle air folds around itself.

A sigh releases the day and its traps
ties eyes to a rising moon.
The shift to liminality
between awake, asleep.

The night crew reclaims its voice
—a hoot to a whisper— as the hood
of feathers that is an owl
hunkers into a ball.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Birdfeeder Ritual

It is morning and doves have come to feed
chatter and complain in the weave and fro.
Bronze winged with a touch of the sun.

Mapped to an avian order decreed by millennia
heads bob to the shape of a heart.
Drab and colourful in mimic to ritual.

Bowing, courting to orchestrated movement
in the knit of sun and shade dappled trees.
Lighter than a twig, easier than a breath.

A touch of theatre to accompany a cuppa
before the mist can clear.
Silence holds everything together.

The cusp when every thing listens
stretched towards the slightest shift.
Understand the understated.

Question how those unconfined
by gravity rise to the light.
Glimmered as only ghosts can be.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

flattened by forlorn desire
yet still between fingers and memory
we bruise off each other

I follow it down, further down,
a parcel of silence landed between us,
each flattened by forlorn desire

fate and its casual cruelty,
histories circling
as we bruise off each other

edged by sickles of questions.
where sits the god of betweens?
us flattened by forlorn desire

a weakness for fine words and
minor chords, urgings yes, but now
bruised by each other

the diameter of solitude?
a grey dawn steals forward,
we, bruised off each other,
flattened by forlorn desire

Kevin Gillam

it catches the morning light
this small paperweight
now warm to the touch
in my hand

I watched my son make it
nine years ago
rolling green and gold
into the molten glass

the rod moving to and fro
gently gathering the grey
of my nephew’s ashes

this small dome
holds life and death
love and loss
I cradle it
in the palm of my hand
and feel its warmth

Candy Gordon

It wasn’t till a few days
had passed that I heard
and found myself
grieving for this man
from childhood years.

He used to pick up my brothers
and others in a relay service,
take them to Beatty Park Aquatic
Centre to play water polo
for ‘Triton’ twice a week

and it wasn’t long before he
told my mother he wanted
to take me as well. “Oh,
come on Cliff, he’s only
eight years old!” she said

but before long, I was sitting
with them on the kerb
outside Charlie Carters at
Canning Bridge waiting for
the Holden sedan and that
happy, smiling man.

Umpiring games he’d carry
his sports bag and whistle
with a blue and white flag protruding
through the years, he was
so much a part of our growth
and belonging to a team.

I read your obituary notices
that talk of the great bloke
and your ‘infectious sense of
humour’: “I wouldn’t be dead
for quids!” you’d laugh and
all those memories we’ll keep.

Mike Greenacre

Three Women Painting

Three women painting
under a backyard pergola,
their conversation flowing
as brushstrokes of friendship
that have coloured their
times together like stars

teaching buddies whose lives
have touched at the chalkface
and teacher-talk from telephone
calls, email, to text exchanges
with the changing lines

their painting styles range from
‘amateur’ one quips as her
canvas holds the rolling green
of a Constable painting of
South Downs in Sussex

to another’s as she drapes her canvas
in colour like Monet’s ‘Water
Lillies’, while the third
‘Gessos’ her canvas to shape
‘The Sunflowers’ like Van Gogh

…playful, colourful, mystical …
they smile to one another
“free-form – like free verse!”
they laugh, together
they’re a portrait of creation

standing, sitting, reaching
across each other’s smiles,
their body-language speaks the
unwritten language of the artist,
brushstrokes for words like stars.

Mike Greenacre

Today on Whadjuk Boodjar, in this place
of the woylie, also known by traditional custodians
as the place of tears, it rains.

And rains. People shelter in the café near the shop
offering oracle readings, cradling cups:
cappuccino, flat white, macchiato.

There’s not been such weeping since news
of the death of Nonna, sovereign of the Soup Truck,
rippled along these streets.

Today tears spill, stream, cascade
we are awash for you beloved gentleman,
miracle making artist, anarchist,

sauntering liege of this city,
sporting topper or woolly-nest tam o’shanter,
soaring green feathered headpiece–

bare chest and khaki shorts–
an emporium of eye-ware
not obscuring the gleam in your eyes.

We remember your beard of a thousand twist and twirls,
jewelled fingers, painted nails, silken lounge wear,
your dapper jacket with pantaloons–

Professor Sir Horatio T Birdbath, former
Premier in Exile, your wall grew with your vast heart,
you took your advice, did justice to your talent.

Once when we chatted, drank coffee,
a scarlet telephone receiver in your hand,
why did I not think to get your number?

Your presence lives on, but wish I could ring
to ask where the line from the arrow you drew from
the exit marked on your wall has taken you.

Jenifer Hetherington

On my way home, I lost my way,
or so it seemed:
one moment I was walking along
a track I knew quite well;
wandering in my mind,
letting my feet find the accustomed way,
aking little notice of where they went.

It seemed that the wind had altered;
and maybe it had:
when I stopped to look about,
thinking that some rain might be coming,
I was startled by not recognising
what I saw, nothing was familiar,
everything was odd, out of kilter.

There was no connection to anything
that I knew or remembered:
the track was broken, rubble strewn,
the trees and plants exotic;
this was a different land
and I had no idea how I had come here,
nor any notion of how to find a way back.

The light had a peculiar tone,
pale and insipidly yellow;
not a quality for this time of day,
but what time was it, I wondered:
a glance at my watch proved pointless
for it had stopped only a few minutes
from the time I had set out.

I tried to take stock, to find some sense
in my very alien situation:
there had to be an explanation;
somehow I had drifted into what felt
like a separate universe, alternate
and a little grotesque, not enough
to make me panic, not yet.

Because I had no reference points:
there didn’t appear to be a basis
for making a definite decision;
so I sat down on the rocky road,
waiting for my mind to find clarity,
hoping for some sudden revelation,
an answer to my muddle of questions.
I must have been sitting for some time

and slipped into a kind of reverie;
quite suddenly I became alert:
I was back where I had been earlier;
the path looked normal, the light
had slipped into the colour typical
for the time and the day.

But there was a mystery here,
something which must be solved:
it is not normal to find oneself
quite somewhere else in time and space,
and I needed to know how
I had been momentarily caught
in the gaps between the seconds.

Ruari Jack Hughes

I looked down the road…

I looked down the road to see where it led,
but all was obscured by nebulous mists
drifting across the path.

So I looked instead at what was near:
rude shapes and teasing speculations
mocking my curiosity.

Is this the way of it, I wondered,
alone, with no anchor for stability,
no fellows to share the journey?

Phantoms flustered through my memories,
for a moment fostering hope
and unrelated possibilities, soon discarded.

Behind me was all of what had been:
endeavours and nisus, likewise veiled
by erratic remembrance, clouded ego.

I looked down the road…
but the looking gained me nothing;
no signposts, no hint of destination.

Without map or other directory,
one thing only appeared certain:
there was no going back;
my way lay fixedly before me.

Ruari Jack Hughes

a cyclist bursts out from a shadowy bend
a wild one
galloping down the riverside path
on her pinto

minus a helmet in such a strong blow
her bleached blonde mane
streaming above dark roots
a war bonnet for a Comanche chief

yahooing cowboys cycle past
not long after
maybe headed for the fast-food fort
half a suburb away

eyes slit from the prickles
in late afternoon’s tumbleweed sun
an old gunman, you mosey on
shoulders hunched

Ross Jackson

Necessity defiance
sadness joy
quarrel
over space in still water

chores on my to-do list
glide through still water
each picked off like trout
taking a lure

sometimes
nothing is in still water
but sunlit sand

on the best days
there is only still water

Beth Kirkland

Do I dream? you may say.
I don’t know how to reply
upon such short notice.
In what I call my dreaming,
that unsighted by day,
i seemingly roam
without apparent intention.

You ask me
if I have dreams?
I should say no, not really,
[not that which you should know.]
I could say that I dream at times,
but as to seeing with eyes unopened,
I have nothing insightful to report.

You say that I misunderstand
when you ask me do I dream?
Do you mean do I have aspirations?

Oh that dreaming, I say.
Unrestrained by forethought
I will likely say that my aspirations are
as ethereal as my dreams, as am I.
I am dumbfounded at my saying this aloud.

peter knight

The clues are in your stance,
that casual control,
a stillness of expectation.
They’re lodged in the wingspan
of your shoulders
ready for flight.
They’re caught in the walk of you,
the shift of snake hips
rippling to thigh.
They’re deep in the turn of your wrist
connecting to hand,
to fingers, to bone.
They nestle in the quirk of your lips
curling to crooked smile,
and beam in the light from your eyes
when you look my way.
To everyone else,
it’s a mystery.

Veronica Lake

I walk down to the lake through
a chorus of birdsong, bushes busy
with twitter and flit of honeyeaters,
weebills, a wagtail chit-chittering.
Confetti flight, light on a leaf,
their tinsel silver foil tinkling
stabs pin holes in the chill air.
A wattlebird call, the harsh grate
of a rusty gate, scrapes at surfaces.

Winter wind riffles the lake, a wake
of coots strident as they scoot
among ducks, a quacking chorus
of squabbles and wing-flaps.
On the bank, a white egret hunches,
songless and statue still. Origami.

The lone black swan is engrossed
in endless preening, regal and silent.
Today there is no melodic fluting.
Instead, the mournful minor key
of a raven is the background score.

It is Saturday and as I arrive home,
an ice-cream van plays Greensleeves.
I turn down my hearing aids.
The echo of birdsong remains.

Mardi May

you call me criminal
but I’m running for my life
they already got my mother
my son my wife
I love my country but it’s death to me

I don’t want your land
I need your help but you
won’t give me a hand
you’re blind to my plight
deaf to my call
I just want my life

that’s all…
close your eyes ‘n when
you hear my plea see your
mother your son not me
hear her suffer see him fall

listen to the shots that finish
them all smell the piss pooling
at your feet see your loves’
blood spattered on the wall

feel your heart explode with grief,
compete with fear and disbelief
as your limbs take flight as
you fight not to fall!

tell me you wouldn’t run
that you’d stop to grab your papers
‘n go searching for a queue –
tell me truly, would you?

is that what you‘d do
if they were
coming for
you?

Francesca Meehan

In the yarning circle
I sit –
a middle-aged white descendant
            of convicts
            of colonisers
            of invaders.
Alone
except for
            a fluttering brown wren
            a honey eater
            a mob of black cockatoos returning to roost
the rustles of native plants
and millennia-old songs
not mine to know
but running deep
through the place
where I sit.

Sally Murphy

There is a deep flood plain, broad, rich green.
River swirling over which the jingly bridge
floats up so high.
Six in the car and the dog, its breath heavy
on my neck, drool across the seat.
Panting, Panting. If we fell
will the dog die with us, fur encasing me,
body rolled on me, wet kiss of tongue
anointing my face?

Bolts rattle in red gum planks,
no rails, I am panting with the dog.
Breath in huffs, it’s not natural
to sail in the sky.
Dog and I we like the flood plain,
its pea-green grass, our paws and feet
earthed. Running till we topple
only our body length.
I will laugh and dog will dig,
her toes scrabbling in the dirt,
my hands grabbing cape daisies to plait.

Virginia O’Keeffe

I will go whenever I feel like going
& stand wherever I want to stand
& put drops in my eyes if I feel like crying.

I will rub my whiskers on automatic
& scratch my bum on command
& tickle you down there on request.

I will run my fingers over your bosom
& kiss you down low if you smile
& lift you while jiving if I can.

I will read love poems your way
& chew on a stalk of hay
& become the farmer I never was.

I will gaze at the sunrise & milky moonset
& set diamonds in your lustrous green eyes
& cluster pearls around your glowing neck.

I will make you a beautiful salmon salad
& share a glass of tantalising tempranillo
& shuffle you towards our private space

& the stars will ring out forever
& the skies will shimmer with evening’s light
& with satisfied yearning I will bid you goodnight.

Allan Padgett

I hear them whisper from trunk to trunk.
I even imagine them move. I turn –
and there they remain, stripped
to their postures, rooted to the soil,
an assembled line of nature’s chassis
exhibiting beautiful amputations.

The silence after my saw is a shock
for the impact of each steel tooth into wood
is compressed into a fading reverberation.
The white cuts bead.
It’s in the long sigh of their canopies,
transpiring into that uncanny thunderhead,
I detect the grumblings.
Perhaps it’s an anthropocenic conscience
but I know what they’re saying:
if they can’t crowd me they can knock
a nest of bull ants onto my hat;
the rigid shapes of distress are perfect alibis.

I thump the hat of ants and think: an orchard
is an ornament, its function is to flatter
the master ego with order, its fruit –
to adorn table and lunchbox –
nature’s tribute to the dominion
over all its forms; it is the oldest perishable
index of civilisation, pruned columns
on the lands of monarchs and city states,
totems of providence for toiling subjects.
But as I load the tray, is it any surprise
I hear reproach lingering
through the breeze and birdsong?

To bring natural things into the fold
of the human is a tender mutilation
of nature’s hide; each uniquely dissimilar
wood form, pared by my blade,
bears the mark of Cultivation, a seam
of scar tissue that runs to the dawn
of the human empire, the long cut
of our clambering out from animal to apex.

When like all empires the human passes
growth will be nature’s vengeance.
Where once an orchard stood brutish jungle
will reign, envined and steaming layers of life
on top of death on top of ooze; Year Zero
for mutant germplasm the empire wrought,
forever unruled, uncut, unseen, unthought.

Chris Palazzolo

you hear a distant drumming noise,
slap like,
sporadic,
thick solid sounds of a bashing inside
cell 4,
west wing, just passed regret.
with a cracking crescendo,
the violent angry song plays off a
broken, stolen, untuned sound from an inmate whose lyrical cries
plead from its chorus of blood.

now you,
burned within its timelessness,
shovel your cold shaking hands under the stained thin
pillow and sandwich your ears tight within it
trying to turn the music off.
(all the way to the morning chow shuffle)
there,
at 6am,
the dazed buzz of cell doors electronically unlock a herding, teetering,
green unbalanced smudge of
criminals shuffling and merging into the chow line.

its over.
the cell door buzz’s open.
you unfold the pillow, rise and fall into line.
numbly drifting further away down the green corridor,
and the sudden commotion of screws
sounding the alarm on west wing and
running passed us and
our forgotten dreams.

Mike Pedrana

anymore

no one sees you anymore but a phone
no one hears you anymore but a rush
no one talks aloud anymore but an anger
no one jokes anymore but the landlord
no one neighbours anymore but a fence
no one unlocks a door anymore but a fire
no one visits anymore but an unpaid bill
no one smiles anymore but a lawyer
no one reads anymore but a divorced man’s mother
no one shouts anymore but regret
no one agrees anymore except old ladies praying
no one visits anymore except an apology
no one shadows flowers on a grave anymore but a cremation
no one helps the poor anymore but a shopping trolley
no one loves anymore except aging floral aunties
no one holidays anymore except a travel agents dream
no one gives anymore except the small print
no one shakes hands anymore except a promotion
no one wins anymore but a bank
no one is faithful anymore except a crime
no one is safe anymore except a father’s daughter

no one sees you anymore but a phone.

Mike Pedrana

False hope often arrives with spring.

The hope of a new lease and the end of all my problems.
A vision of butterflies and dragonflies soaring
across impossibly blue skies above vibrant green garden beds,
laden with coquettish flowers whose perfume pervades the bucolic landscape,
down through a cornucopia of plump vegetables arising from their loamy plots.

Spring helps me forget the fallen dreams of autumn.
It sweeps out the musty cold days of an enclosed house in winter
dispelling the damp creeping around the edges;
the damp that finally condensed into an ashen grey film inside the window panes.

But no sooner has spring beguiled my senses
offered me a helping hand to lift my burdened soul,
than summer boldly steps in, ready to muscle out the calm idyll,
and blast me with the full force of its reality.

Elena Preiato

I woke to no dreams and two ants crawling across a desktop
still littered with last night’s unfinished inklings
crumbs of unfounded ideals and principles of rotation,
day-in day-out misremembered notation
meter and metronome marching one-by-one
to cupboard depths and closed drawers.
I used to have dreams, waking as if covered in ants
full-fledged wings, tri-segmented bodies
unsure whether I was the queen or the farm, the hill or the mole.
I woke to no dreams and two ants I squished into tomorrow’s oblivion
reminders of feathers fallen and flown coops
crumbs always crumbs waiting where I’m afraid to look.

Phoebe Brown Roberts

suspended between two boughs
a single strand of silk
flutters in the rising wind
its protein threads
stronger than steel by weight
awaits its owner
to expand the trap

but he doesn’t
he is restless

the sun catches the movement
the filament shudders
making it look fragile
inconsequential
hardly a lure for unwary insect
one would think

he has no tolerance to wait
his simple web designed
for opportunistic meals
of tiny soil creatures
but he barely settles
has not the patience

he must roam
he must find a mate

Barry Sanbrook

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_______________________
Murmurations

I wonder if someone born deaf
hears the music
starlings compose in the sky

if their hearts are filled
with the rise and fall of their murmurations
crescendo and diminuendo
the flight of an orchestra

the choreography they dance to

Soulo

Tighten the straps on my apron,
find rags, cotton buds, clean water
arrange brushes and palette.

The canvas has been prepared
with three coats of gesso.
I touch the grain, make sure it’s dry.

Now begins an internal dialogue,
hardly acknowledged.
What am I painting?
What am I really painting?

Is my colour palette warm or cool?
I choose my brush,
feel the softness of sable hairs,
stare into the distance.

The first brush stroke, background.
Colours swirl in my head
and on my canvas

I lose time, awareness, myself.
Minutes turn to hours.
I dip the brush into my tea

The painting takes over
and out of chaos
comes meaning.

Amanda Spooner

When they say Kalamunda
I can hear the syllables echo
through the Jarrah forest,
with each sharp axe fell.

So much has been lost,
yet so much still endures.
Warm Mahogany hues, life
rich with the grain of things.

The bedrock and gravel
rise above banksia sand plains,
where bullock teams once carried
logs on a whim.

Canning Mills timber train
zig-zagged up the gnarled hill,
belching coal smoke, slipping wheels.
A reminiscent taste of orchard dew.

The smell from my grandfather’s bakery
wafted down the hill on Haynes Street.
That was another time
Now I walk the same street.

I sit in a café drinking coffee
where the train station used to be.
The town clock
rings a B flat for every hour.

And I wonder how to begin
to tell you how I love my place.
My homeland is in the hills.
How deep a sense of place can be.

When I am far away
I can recall the meaning of this town.
The streets and shops in a row, I know
each friendly face at Sunday church.

I can close my eyes and imagine
the autumn leaves falling in Stirk Park,
the Anzac service at daybreak,
and shady picnics in summer

The chat at the barber’s shop.
The hotel where many a Sunday lunch
drifted into a summer’s afternoon,
Crabbs’ store with its wooden floor.

The Newsagent owned by cockney Joe,
sold everything from fruit to local crafts,
served with a smile and a story.
Familiar faces nod with a wave.

How can I begin to tell you,
how I love my place
that fills my heart with imaginings,
of things recalled and half forgotten.
A homecoming of emotions that belong.

Michael Stevens

Potato Famine Émigré

From the Shannon you came
at first a trickle
then a raging flow.

Your grassy green banks
wet with tears
wept at the sadness of it all.

Depart or starve
such decisions you made
through gritted teeth.

Everything your family
owned was sold
for a passage to the southern land.

Enduring sickness at sea
loss of privacy and whiff of shite
landing with just the shirts on your backs

and the promise of land
that turned into a swamp
and Greenough wheat rust.

You knew the heartache and hardship
and loss of children so young
but not the heat and the flies.

Bottom of the dung heap
graded by your accent
Bog Irish.

Captured by your religion
cast away Catholics
cast out by the English.

Baggage from Éire
collected and brought with you
your prejudice was unpacked on arrival.

You endured
then endeared
your spirit to me.

Block headed persistence
straight through determination
and a sense of the Fae.

My inheritance
for better or worse.
But never poorer.

Michael Stevens

It is like
the fabric
of my soul
is flammable.
Everything
catches it
alight,
everything triggers
fight or flight.
There is no solace
in being alive
when I
am a walking explosive,
when my heart can detonate
at any given moment.
But I think I have
what it takes
to survive
if I can go through
burning
alive.

Kaitlyn Sun

Holding Space

When the tide rises in me
I hug my arms to my chest.
They anchor and compress
my ribcage, level out
its ragged breaths.

I sink down to the bottom
of the ocean’s black belly,
feel the underwater pressure
squeeze every cell in my body
until I become smaller and smaller,

and I hold myself
like I am my own mother.

Kaitlyn Sun

The harp is not only the last of sunlight
glancing against the surface – but also
the way this warps and elongates due
to ripples – how an amber beam is cast
into the depth – revealing a swan’s foot
closed then opening to splay the webs
between the toes – pushing back and
spilling water – making a silty churn
of water-weed – which the cello-swan
arches down to collect – by virtue of
her elongated neck. Cellist – cello –
and swan all are one – transmuted –
sound to feather to hand on strings
and back again as the swan’s neck
is arched – as the swan’s bill drips
its water back to water – and her life
skips autumn and plunges into
winter. But the swan still is swimming
her sunlit eddies eternally – still is
bending the bowed question of her throat
into endless water – and the harp
is still transfigured with the cello.

Giles Watson

A symposium of stares twist
turn sun halved through dust
no longer held by eons
their stories flow around them
in a golden liquidity of sinuosity

twining temple pylons
warm in noon sun
Egypt’s cats have turned neglect
to a sleekness of advantage
eyes that melt in spade shaped faces
are mirrored in crumbling facades

living in Bast’s shadow they understand
they are not feral
they are not naked
they wipe their feet on
History

Gail Willems

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