26.0: INNOCENCE

Poetry Editor MTC Cronin
Released July 2007
Index of Poems
Contributor Notes
Cover image: Kent MacCarter

In 2007, we returned to a binary format, with the twin William Blake-inspired issues of INNOCENCE and EXPERIENCE. Join Margie Cronin in this bumper issue’s worth of innocent but never innocuous poems!




Tom Clark: Canada, Late September

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tom Clark

A haiku and a meditation     In all places now we hear the wind sing of war: dust will fall for dust.   * * * *   I stepped briefly outside myself – or so I thought when …

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Tom Clark: That Old Light on the Hill

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tom Clark

I dreamt up a little verse – and in my mind, a circus-ground of sound, it neatly rhymed before this telling (inevitably) brings it worse. In fog, a weary one did climb an old stone staircase, spiralling, echoing ocean, up …

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Tom Clark: Why be a delegate?

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tom Clark

Alright, we're ready now. Not all issues are black and white. Not all issues are about how to fight. But the facts are: this one's different. We're not it. A creature marries. Is reborn. It marries again. The history, thus, …

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Tim Heffernan: Radiant (1959)

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tim Heffernan

The summer dust storms shroud my mother as she labours with this the end of the sixth decade pregnancy. A year earlier Maralinga rains settled on South Australian soil. Now Strontium 90 is lifted and dumped as soiled westerlies finger …

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Tiggy Johnson: Discovery

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tiggy Johnson

for Claudia     groove carved in your brow you consider the motion of your fingers – splayed first, then curling, two at a time to a loose fist a moment earlier your head jerked back, face crumpled, perplexed by …

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Tiggy Johnson: Skydiving With Elephants

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tiggy Johnson

He looked at me like I'd just suggested he go tandem skydiving with an elephant as his instructor, then shook his head, swivelled his chair around, resumed tapping at keys. I shrugged, said 'what?', rolled my chair over beside him. …

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Tiggy Johnson: daddy’s girl

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Tiggy Johnson

for craig       in the lead up to today your fifth birthday daddy's been trying not to imagine the anticipation of your first day at school last year he pictured you throwing first a ball with your cousins …

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Stuart Cooke: Edge Music

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Stuart Cooke

So, Yes, she said – because, you see, I had been walking along Maroubra Beach with my T-shirt off in the late morning of a windy day, with flat lazy surf in dribbles and splashes and my need to do …

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Steve Halle: Invitation to the Cult of Musth

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Cordite Poetry Review

My fingers hold the old pocketknife. 'Many uses,' master said, and a picture on the side, carved into ivory: a bull elephant grunts, solitary. 'Cut something else away,' he said, grinning. My hand worked the wood block, and the pen …

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Steve Halle: Polish stripper in my lifeboat

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Cordite Poetry Review

Dear Polish stripper Monique (if that is your real name), We are in the same boat. We are in the same lifeboat. And I felt you. Either that or you brilliantly co-opted my sensibilities and took my money. You can …

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Sandra Long: You With the Leopard Spots

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Cordite Poetry Review

You looked so bold and strong this morning I said you seem much better, you with the leopard spots. And you expanded around me your lips and eyes fusion of man and woman forget all distinctions The woman in you …

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Sandra Long: Eeyi Eeyi Duck (quack quack-quack)

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Cordite Poetry Review

Sleepy sleepy time crawls over the dirty horizon Like so many ducks – quack quack quack Eeyi eeyi duck quack quack-quack They come crawling in a dust storm yellow rubber Green with trapped water Squeak squeak spurt – are you …

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