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And there it is at last, The last one gone, the final star, The term of its self-fuelled fire surpassed And cancelled. Nothing but a background hum And darkness stretching through the nebular Detritus into spans of time to come More incommensurably vast,   Next to the reign of light, Than Earth’s deep ages set beside A mayfly’s one transparent day in flight. But hale those aeons back and see the face Of the dead planet swept and scarified By strobe-lit storm clouds and red gales that chase The skyline as the days ignite.   Just a few feet below […]

I fold my body inside the cave’s throat tight as a limpet and wait   for rain— a desert intertide. Sandstone hollows out over time   like thirst. Canvas on my back hardens into shell, my ear flattens   as foot-tongue— I can hear [I can hear]   The distant taste of salt.   [ ]   The cattle have drunk. The generator is almost done pumping the bore for tomorrow.   Ashley Haywood is a writer, artist and poet with various works published in Australia and overseas. She is in the inaugural recipient of the UQ Fryer Library Creative Writing […]

Not people die but worlds die in them —Yevtushenko   On your brave, calm journey out of life the objects in the room have lost all substance: the water jug, the wafer biscuits, the artificial orchid that I watered.   Your oxygen machine keeps time with loyal breath and beat: strong, soft, soft, soft … Within the hospice ward we are all back inside the womb again; a mother’s heart and lungs are counting our slow time.   At first we hear the notes inside our heads, the hummed harmonics of a distant choir, a sonic quirk behind the automated […]

A boardwalk of recycled rubber softens our steps; the nearby heron doesn’t fly away, but lowers its leg into the pond the way a scribe might load a brush with ink pondering a new script. Melaleucas with their tattered, layered bark seem a subculture of botanical grunge— especially near the tailored limbs of the salmon gums.   A Brahminy kite is riding a carousel of air, its white collar and chestnut wings a prototype of the aviator jacket. Crabs tuck into the mud, but as we pass they stop— then slip laterally, quick as hands playing prestissimo passages from Liszt. […]

I want to be decked & set— smoke rolling from my porte-cigarette,   plush as a leopard’s pelt, decreed by royal warrant.   Knuckledust me—a bling of cabochons like eggs—   a hatchery of bonbons bulbous on every appendage.   O spangled, O sparkling— drip me in onyx, pin me a wildcat   lumped with diamonds, blunt club of the head   dewdropped in emerald, then clip platinum lianas to my wrist.   Hunter, huntress— there’s life in me yet.   Fetch my tiger lorgnette, snap tourmaline crocodiles at my neck,   pour me into the oval yawn of a […]

You are always beginning again— it is only     a matter of degree: you walk into a room, forgetting   the book you came looking for, walk out with a dirty glass     you lay down another ring     without realising   like a tree     it doesn’t hurt a bit You are always beginning again: you walk into the forest, forgetting,   there is a storm, there is a morning, you walk out, trailing possibilities from your hands     they drip, like   snapped branches     There was a storm, there was a morning     There was a name, once, a specific and grievous   history, […]

High up, circling, they’re miniature, but how quickly they spot a wound’s aperture. With profane style and brazen gait, ragged-out like sorcerers, they gorge and glut—they’ll even swallow bones and teeth, help themselves to eyes, noses and other birds’ gizzard stones. Yes, they rid us of stinking flesh— but I can’t stop feeling disgust at how they savour the brains, the entrails with equal relish, peck the anus, the face with equal appetite. I can’t stop my distress at their insouciance if the carcass they maraud is gazelle, child, or rabid dog.   Judith Beveridge is the author of seven […]

a wide line of sunlight intensifies the lime green grip on the paper scissors   a photo sits in a shadow showing the time before quantum physics brought telepathy to imagery   seeing without seeing is a real thing   that time you licked a saltbush out in the scrub— that’s the photo   that the taste wasn’t that good isn’t ‘revealed’   next time quantum physics might try different senses & maybe preview flavour   colours take care of themselves   it’s spooky knowing how it ends in advance   no guessing     next time   Pam Brown, a dedicated […]

Endless cloudwork. Ragged mountains, and the ruins of astonished volcanoes. The promise of oceans. Billions of leaves, casually dropped over millions of years. Honey and maggots. Stoical lakes. Cacophony of insects. Smoke and mist. Birdlife: the poised and the frantic. Wily cephalopods and platonic jellyfish. The four-legged creatures, raising their heads to take in landscape. Forests finding their limits. The severe night sky with its singular moon. Uncountable orphaned stars.   David McCooey is a prize-winning poet and critic. His latest collection of poetry is Star Struck (UWAP, 2016).

I remember the sudden silence of birds, the angled eeriness as light dimmed just like that for a moment in daylight. And you standing there struck like me by the music falling on us as whip birds and magpies woke again— out of quick darkness into new light.   Simeon Kronenberg has published poetry, reviews, interviews and essays in Australian poetry journals and anthologies. He has also published journals and anthologies. He has also published widely on the contemporary visual arts. Distance, his first poetry collection, was published in 2018 by Pitt Street Poetry.