26.0: INNOCENCE
Tom Clark: Canada, Late September
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 …
Tom Clark: That Old Light on the Hill
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 …
Tom Clark: Why be a delegate?
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, …
Tim Heffernan: Radiant (1959)
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffTiggy Johnson: Discovery
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffTiggy Johnson: Skydiving With Elephants
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. …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffTiggy Johnson: daddy’s girl
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffStuart Cooke: Edge Music
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 …
Steve Halle: Invitation to the Cult of Musth
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffSteve Halle: Polish stripper in my lifeboat
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffSandra Long: You With the Leopard Spots
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffSandra Long: Eeyi Eeyi Duck (quack quack-quack)
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 …
Posted in 26.0: INNOCENCE Comments OffPaolo Bertolani: Do you want a cup of coffee? It won’t be a minute
Do you want a cup of coffee? It won't be a minute. Where do you think you are going, when it's still dark? To dig up dust? Stop a second, Giovanni, we must die anyhow, and this spade, these tomatoes …
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