Translation

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Brigid Coleridge

It was the softness that caught her.
Consent they taught at school, t
brought down like a gate. You say no,
you say yes – little, pliant words, daisy
petals yielding to touch. It was how you
spoke it, they said. She tried shaping
a syllable that it might hold every
possible present, every ending. Yes
like ironed bunting, determined on
sunshine. No like a gunshot from a
steady hand. In Italian you said si,
your mouth smiling in spite of itself.
In French, your smile drooped: si
to disagree, si with a non in your heart.
There had been a baby once, Aunt Mary
said, so small they lined a drawer with
cotton wool for fear she might be lost.
Yes and no like drawers: you choose left,
you choose right. Yes and no like cotton
wool, pulled into wisps, into other shapes
entirely. Yes and no like your body blooming,
pillowy with open-ended syllables.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

自然/It-self

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Luoyang Chen

for Dechen Khadro

落叶风吹随河流
提壶温酒醉人意
影现仙鹤丛中 一跃
数不清丝绸、忧愁
眼/演
化为
字/自

Fallen leaves, wind-blown, following river, flow
Raising flagon, warm wine, wish mesmerised
In the woods, looms the divine crane, leaps
Uncountable silk, gloom
Eye/acting
Turns into
Word/self

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Color Theory

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Christian Ryan Ram Malli

Somewhere, there is an ocean. Inside that ocean
is my father. Inside my father is another ocean.
And inside it, thousands of yellow butterflies waft,
dancing and swaying in new wind. All of them,
dead and alive like truths. There is no difference.
I have told the cat purring inside my head that
my brain ran out of cat food. Such disobedience,
these thoughts. These images
that are supposed to be mine, and yet my father
isn’t here to tell me to man up,
and talk to real people. My imaginary dad meant
men, who may have real cats. May be as real
as claw. As glint.
Youth is weird and doesn’t have the ocean,
nor butterflies. What youth has is a man who
turns yellow when I touch him, which makes him
outrageous, but oddly mine
and forever evidence. I met a girl at a party
who looked like a kiss and I pitied her. Some people
look like a blowjob and I pity them even more.
If I look closely, the truth is yellow and will
flutter towards the nearest open window overlooking
billboards and other liars. I try to follow it to know
the hardening theory in my body, saying,
you look like a kiss, too,
the kind people throw at birds.
And I am afraid of absence, and I am surrounded
by its lush perimeter. There is a lullaby that only appears
in yellow. I hum it in the dark of a stranger’s neck.
The morning is precise and full of fruit. There is no
ocean here. There has been no ocean for years. The cat
says she saw a yellow butterfly inside an apartment
I have loved so much I have forgotten it.
She says
she sees it everywhere: inside sleeves, inside palms
pretending to be something else, in the middle
of Sta. Mesa, where I met so many people and remembered
no one who wanted to forgive my hands. I love absence
not for what it is, but for what it used to be. How once
it whorled inside my lungs; an engine that thought
no matter what I was going to be loved.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Alternate Version

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Laurie Duggan

Ken writes the unwritten poem
as I once planned the unfinished poem
(that would be finished)

in fact I planned
a whole book of them

Unfinished

as in [ ]

the blurb:
‘anyone
can write finished poems . . .

people of the future,
if you like these poems
finish them yourselves’

the poems would be walked away from
like dead cars on a lonely stretch

each one left
with the feared instruction:

‘requires assembly’

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

(Where is the) art critic (now)

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Leah Muddle

What I like to think of is the humidity, and the bumps, the horns; swash of trousers, heeled footsteps, breath of doorways . . . tumblers roll and clunk, eyelids snap, chair legs tap and scrape, shifty as a toey horse. I
like / love, the idea of / the bristling critic — grey brown black

purple checkered man woman with thin electric hair, with many more than two arms to wield: pencils, set squares, folding wooden rulers, bleeding pens, yes cigarettes, rolled newspapers, maltreated specs, and cuvée glasses; leaning and peering pink-nosed and nutting out — with intent — writing Miss. Martin. so sharply it penetrates the table-top. You acorn says Agnes of Mister Judd, near to one year later (1963) stepping back from a 6 x 6 to dry soft ruddy hands on a paint rag.

There seems to have been a kind of intimate staging — sweet comedy of the conspicuously furtive: artist to one side of the lift, critic on the other . . . w h i s p e r s . . . transmitted atop black umbrellas, left at the thresholds of florists; knowing or curious glares that crossed streets and packed establishments like animated diagrammatics of zodiac constellations. Now

there is so much air

no court, no ring, no scratchy field or is there / are there / somewhere: snips of little columns, short acts (lunge, parry, bow)? The realm (((                                        ))) seems languid, shoeless. Where are the ground-dwellers?

*

I’ve called to mind the drawing on page 87 of ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’ by Jean Webster (Signet Classic’s edition, brown as clay), which depicts a neat scene: Judy serving tea to one sparrow or finch, one stooping squirrel and one large ‘Mrs Centipede’.

Please, this is how I’d like my critic: civil creeper, scrabbler.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

in real life

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Ender Başkan

first thing in the morning she barrels in
daaaaad lets play frida kahlo fell off the bus
ok let me wake up a little
daaaaad get up
i get up
dilan lies on the couch
shes frida now
i pull a blanket over her
shes recuperating
sad face fluttering eyes
im making coffee shes
writhing in pain
yesterday i fell off the bus, she says, no today i fell off the
bus, i just fell off the bus
ooooooo, are you ok?
nooo, i need to rest we
hit the tram and i fell off the bus
my leg is broken
my back hurts
i was covered in gold
my sister helped me, christina
she helped me

i take frida milk and drawing materials
place them beside her bed
simulate a knock at the door
someones at the door, i call out
everyone can come to visit me, she says, but
they have to be quiet
and she falls asleep
i open the door, wave everyone in
hi everyone come through but please be quiet, dilan
i mean fridas
recovering
she fell off the bus
i sit the visitors down with careful gestures
frida writhes a bit more
frida sits up now
hiiiy, she strains
this morning i fell off the bus
it was very loud
it was very crazy
everyone was crying
but im getting better now
frida gets up slowly now
heroic, winces, hobbles, smiles
now shes walking freely its a miracle
ooohh she falls over
i pick her up and
carry her back to bed
weve been playing frida kahlo fell off the bus every morning
for two months
ever since we isolated
and she asked about the frida tableau on her wall
began to embody frida as recovery and resistance icon
we read the story over and over
polio at 6
one leg thinner than the other
fell off the bus at 18
long skirts
mirror above her bed
painting as recovery
art
therapy
communism
diego
feminism
chronic pain
mexico
eyebrow
blue house
miscarriages
america
lovers
queer
trotsky
art
death
fame
i brought the tableau back from mexico, i say, i visited her house, you know
in real life? she asks
yeeeeah, ten years ago, the blue house
did you meet her dad?
no shes dead but i went into her house
is she in mexico heaven?
yeah she is
can i send her a drawing?
of course you can

we have stopped playing frida fell off the bus
now we play secret garden
sometimes frida is a special guest
colin is crying in bed
colin is rescued by mary
mary wheels colin to the garden
they garden
the garden comes to life
bright colours like fridas garden
colin starts to walk again
colin is healed
now we stop playing secret garden
now we play jethro and emmett
two brothers from child care
one is six the other is three
they are plumbers
and we fix pipes under the dinner table

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

haemopoiesis

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Michele Leggott

sunshine99

welcome to the holy island they ask a lot of questions
and use words like apheresis and tetany on the wall a wetland scene
portal into memory someone laughs
and takes blood from my neck someone sings
the body electric apheresis and tetany
in the distance a boat moves slowly closer
who’s in the boat we don’t know
counting on our fingers one two miss a few
ninety-nine a hundred longhouses
dot the shore family relics
strung from roof peak to jetty
soft click of bone on bone three eleven
sixteen eighteen the numbers add up
free as birds over water free
to step ashore on the island yes it’s us in the boat
and us already wading into the shallows to welcome
those voyagers who were once ourselves
from these numbers I will build you
a new body and a new soul over the wetlands a cry
goes up circling like smoke or birds
first small tingling in the tips of my fingers
apheresis to take from tetany concerning
the fingertips

derangement

I am happy when I forget when I remember
I am sad I open The Book of Disquiet
listening for these words I consult the Portugal notebook
running my fingertips over its smooth surfaces
settle for locations between an orange grove
in blossom and half a dozen waterfalls
cascading into the Lake of Tears
I am happy I am sad
deep and dreamless Chitra says
here are your earrings put them on and dance
but the boat is too small and God is great
a cat and a teapot in one fragment and losing your soul
is like dropping an oar into clear water
a chance fragrance printed on x-ray film
I am sad I am happy
the falling waters move about ripping up
certainty retrofitting syntax
a new body and a new soul if you can read
soft click of bone on bone repetitions
bloodwork derangements of syntax
pouring into the liquid air did I say
the boat was small did I say the earrings
are silver and pluripotent and Chitra says
I am sad when I forget when I remember
I am happy bones of two hands on dark film

BEAM

my march of triumph didn’t get as far as a teapot or an old cat
and in the clouds towards the south I lost my soul like an oar dropped in water
here we are back on the lake
quotations intact but wondering how to greet
the islanders coming our way arms full of flowers
eyes full of tears you have come back
they chant for another night of poiesis
here is the teapot here is the old cat
here is the oar sun beams radical
effusions and suddenly we understand
tetanic fingertips to neuropathic toes
just what we’re in for counting down to zero
knocking out resistance a new body
a soul the shape of an oar or even
the oboe they are handing over bird’s-eye maple
flutes and drums fragments that tell us
we are making poetry on the holy island
in the lake of tears butterflies at sea

day zero

a stretch of the imagination blue corundum
weeping blood climbing a ladder
to reach the main floor of the house on the wall
snakes lizards magic birds and monsters they carry me
to a pallet on the floor and perform ceremonies
of purification a wailing instrument
removes the precious substance from its icebox singers
open the line in my arm and cells begin to flow pristine
undifferentiated into the body wracked by chemical barrages
a puppet-master invites the soul to enter representations
of the body electric on its journey to and from the underworld
falling waters orange blossom I have married death
and wait on this bed of dreams for motion to return
dance body dance the day is zero
the cells pour in and everything counts
vast and blue the waters of the caldera wait
for a signal from the birds and monsters the snakes and lizards
who protect this house and will not let me die

bloodwork

as good as a house or shadows thrown on a screen
birds and beasts conduct us lifesize through corridors
day after day the pilot vials have promised
fair winds and waves talking gently shush shush
around the poles of the house walking just them
walking and we are beginning the poetry of blood
counting every day the white and the red and the little coagulants
that tie everything together I have to find your heart
says Ala we want your body and your head
says Katya blow with everything you’ve got
says Dakar flinging her arms about and shouting
to bring the water dragons closer these arcana
on strings these spirit houses
on poles these small footsoldiers
spreading out in formation from my bones
blood poetry but oh my darlings
I am beyond repair the dance is too much the house
too big I am neutropenic
unable to move waiting here and counting days cells waves winds
a teapot and an old cat the oar is lost
when will I see you again it’s like camping
says Anna it takes all day to do nothing
here on the holy island in the lake of tears nothing
but calling up the ghosts of the house the bone doors open

heuriskein

but not before the stars
in her spiral arms turn one more time
and the stirring stick froths the milky
clouds of Oort of Magellan hull down
over Malagasy and incomprehensible
to any but the most persistent listener
falling asleep now as the words
race on over the lunar field and sweet
scented jasmine curls under the sill

ships in the distance completed the sea that lapped my terraces

I fall to pieces but not until
her voice walks me through
the skein of stars that milky way
discovering terraces
spiralling over archipelagos and oceans

*

Note

Preparation for a transformative but ultimately unsuccessful stem cell transplant.

The lexicons of medicine and poetics converge at haemopoiesis (bloodwork) and heuriskein (to discover).

Motutapu is the haematology ward in the sky above Grafton; its walls feature photo murals of New Zealand scenery.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa appears and disappears in the dreams of cellular rearrangement.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Poesy

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Autumn Royal

‘When people speak out in favor of a life of madness, they mean the cute, nice madness, not the disgusting or dangerous kind. The disgusting and dangerous kind is prioritized in language but not in life.’ — Aase Berg

The dash between shelf and life—why do you think I chose you?
I’m a cornice, a decorated projection at the heights of desire—
disenchanted and plastered for the sake of the walls. I’m off
blot at a speed before murder was just a concept—it only takes
a few minutes. I’m attached to the top floor yet down pitched
as I mark virtue. I mark from a hospital bed—they strapped
and pressed me as to why I needed care—in the car, in the kitchen,
in the office chair. They question why I hugged the shaking man
after the meeting—I beg them. I hoard. I’m a version of editing
archetypes and questioning why I’ll never be an inborn model.
I opinion—I but hope to mean we while the death poet becomes
me as I pump petrol into my car, my vehicle—my mouthpiece.
I lie down on a couch and complain about not having a couch—
yet I promised to be static—happy to live in the shed knowing
it’s further than what’s expected. I am threatening with passivity,
dissolving fizz—formerly still now. The crudeness of a rubric—
I mark essays, I mark essays, I mark essays. I mark. I am a mark.
I am marked with deadlines. I mark a high distinction when all
I need is credit—feedback with no response—just for beads.
Trying to investigate consequence and watering soil with spite.
It only takes a few minutes for the organs, the mud, the handlings
of conversations about the sours of milk—found, smelt and drunk.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

The Magic Ball as a (Representational) Diagram

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Carina So

[See Fig. 1 below to print and construct the poem.]

Fig. 1 An Unfolded Poem
(on one of its sides)


Sidenote: An Adjacent Description of Folding

4. is

this word is written between checkerboard creases

reminiscent of calligraphy worksheets in Chinese class, where

a single character is written repeatedly in boxy borders;

the result is almost Steinian:

“is” is “is” is “is”


3. box guide

a piece of paper folded and unfurled:

folded until it makes a soundless accordion

first along its width

then along its length:

thirty-two by eight.


5. unfurl and fold

longitudinal creases dictate the lengthwise pleats

(although each unit along the eight is also divided into three with pencil marks)

the paper is crimped until it resembles window shutters


6. fold it again

reshape the instrument through its latitudes:

the paper is folded again along the guides


1. idea

i had been doom scrolling on my phone when

i came across a video of a magic ball made from scrap—

its motion is filmed on a smartphone

in front of someone’s dining room—

while i,

(most likely) prostate on the lounge,

was suddenly enraptured


7. pit stop: it should be crimped across after (6)

i imagine dragon scales but scales of any creature would be probable and
inaccurate.


8. raise and meet

pleats or ridges raised—

shark-fin shapes over calm water

or mountains pulled from the ground—

the act bends the spine

creating an arc or the letter C,

let the edges of the accordion meet

until it makes an ellipsoid earth-shape

(9.) glue it and wait


10. magic

once it is set,

let the little paper ball cave into itself

until it makes a new shape:

a mathematical form from algebra class—

a two-sided trumpet—

then fold it onto itself

again and again

from ball to fluted shape then ball to fluted shape

again and again


1.5 the word is simple

motion and form depict the meaning of the word

my English teacher once said,

“poetry is about how things are said”


11. Fig 1

i cut along the line

and repeat from 3.

read the rows of “is” as they overlap—

encroaching over borders—

and the columns as they are squished in space

or expanded

i think of the modes of is-es

maybe those that

i hold on my phone

on

internet

stories—

people in Zoom boxes

with their cups of tea—

or

those is-es that

straight lines

struggle to depict


i fold across longitudes and latitudes

home is

14.630238, 121.004109

here is

-33.687340, 150.312842


a piece of paper is

a shape-shifting

being


2. The Real Folding Guide: YouTube

keyword search: infinity, origami, ball

referenced result:

“Origami: MAGIC BALL – Yakomoga EASY origami tutorial”
uploaded by Easy Origami – Yakomoga on Jan. 26, 2019

A pdf version of Fig 1 can also be found here.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Closer

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Felicity Plunkett

A clothesline dandles
rows of vacant newborn
jumpsuits. The way I made
a life for you and you
fell away from it.

Worn sheets ghost a whipped
branch, swing the wind
to haunt me, opening
folds of loss and hope. Only I
meet their flinching gaze.

Two cotton tunics sigh,
ironed, airing. Two girls’
lives prepared by an unseen
woman. Fresh to press forward
into blood, into breeze.

Airless drawers, closed
room stacked with stuff. Left
-over treasury, thrifted loot, boots
chunky and scuffed. A life walked
away. Its imprint stays.

All this is emptied
of us, as we are emptied
of life. We are frayed, we are
threadbare, our hold light
on branch, bar and hand.

Open to breeze and breath
and the end of breath. Open to hope
and blood, the swing and fall
of it all, to the end
of light’s flinching hope.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Nine Lives

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Ken Bolton

Fix breakfast, make coffee.
A sort of virtuous morning. No
hanging about. Wash clothes, dinner
—on the stove by 10.30, cooking,
ready for some time tonight

or another day. The plumber—who
could show any time—
(‘over from the mainland’) . . .
his day on the island.
Cath comes back
from swimming, headache gone.
& Lorraine arrives. They take off
for some market—no, an ‘open
garden’ inspection. We discuss
dinner together first—Ian’s plan
& ours. One or other we’ll
go with. I show
illustrations I have done
—a kids’ book for Finn & Max.

And they’re gone. No poems,
unless this is one. (This notebook

—one I’ve travelled with a few times—
hardly marked—phrases,

headings—fragments—designed …
‘to start a poem’, or make one possible

#

(notes from a day, a decade
or more ago—
beginning with a train trip:

things I’d have thought, or noticed
looking out the window, that

I did—or might have—

that drift off, to become notes
for a kind of poem (not

described) I’ve thought about,
but which would seem unlikely,

a chain of remembered moments—

of intensity, mindless focus,
happiness—none of them

in most senses, of any consequence
A number

instances of swimming, & of sensed
well-being derived from it—& a couple more,

similar,
added at a later stage, or signalled

just by their ‘name’

by which they will be recalled.
(A few are tagged

with a heading—’riding
bike’. Ha, ha.)

Nothing has come of them.
(A notebook

I look at, at two or three year intervals,
on trips, usually, to Sydney. Once at least to London.)

Then lines
that connect
to one specific trip … & a journey by train to Kurt’s

#

There’s a lizard appeared suddenly, on
the lower rung of a paling fence
six feet away, his body one
voluptuous curve as he
hangs there on an angle sunning

this must happen to everybody
& be, equally for all of them, like this

a ‘still moment’, the skink’s side
pulsing.
I remember one
I saw in Rome, & wrote in to The Circus—

an experience for The Strongman I think.
(Here it is again)

I’m reading
Ishmael Reed’s book Flight
to Canada. It’s very smart

& it’s very funny. Years ago
I read his The Terrible Twos, or the

Troublesome Threes or something,
which I also liked—tho maybe not this much.

#

If there’s a Greek term for it—
the poem about a putitative but non-existent poem—

Creative Writing could legitimately establish
a new time-waster (no—’genre’), one more

‘exercise’—as they have done,
to the detriment of poetry, with the Ekphrastic poem

a word I hate to see or hear
& wince in the expectation of—of the finished article, I mean—

the ekphrasm—

regularly drear, dumb—
short of what once was intended.

#

If there’s a name for it
“then it’s a thing,” as the present

would presently put it.

#

Kurt & I

go swimming—his place at Currarong.

He would hardly credit

how little I swim these days—how little
I have swum, over this last decade. In-

explicably. But I put on a show for him
& we swam & I enjoyed it.

Some of the other occasions—these moments—were at Coalcliff
or Stanwell Park, nearby—with Laurie, probably

& Pam, Micky, Sal & Erica
maybe Kurt. Another was at Burning Palm

—is that what it was called?—below a steep cliff
in the National Park. A tiny settlement

of tin houses, built first during the Depression
& allowed to linger—some remnant families—permanently

probably, unemployed. A few small children.
The same crowd—(of us)—in the water

The extraordinary thing—that I remember—
that the sand dropped away so quickly

We were buoyant, lifted up & down,
many feet, each wave—

(a tiny arc of sand—the beach—
just feet away), the tin dwellings pink

& blue & green & rust & russet
just back from it. The buoyancy—&

the friendship—made me euphoric
& I laughed. It was as if

they were the same thing.

Barbara was there too
& Kate probably.

One of my friends has fallen out
with his (former) best friend. How could this

be? It seems a dark note
to introduce. Too dark to be avoided

(Tho avoiding things, isn’t that what I’m
good at?)

The ethics of poems.

I wondered once—or, first, some years back
if it could make an autobiography

these best moments,
a sequence, a chain, a necklace of them?

to parallel my real biography
of family, relationships—&

reading, writing, work—my real life.
Two tales. A poem with a title like

Substitution, Passing, or Bowling Up.
What could be the name for this form or genre?

Nebulosa Prospectus? “Now
coming, soon, to be inflicted on the unprotected”—

Write a poem, about a poem, that you
haven’t written.

Mine would include other swimming moments—
one with Cath & the kids, Gabe & Anna. Yuri?

Tom? I don’t remember, tho I remember doing a drawing of it,
calling it The Life Aquatic after an old movie

from the 80s the 90s.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Yellow Gully

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Tais Rose Wae

in childhood
we read the landscape
in a different language

rode the curves
of yellow gully
alive with wattle

and it was flower nectar
tapped onto open palms
licked clean

my brother armed with
spear and arrow and story
and fists full of hair

my pockets dragged with
moss and river rocks and rhyme

and the clouds full of song
admitted that everything began
with the sun at which we squinted

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Grey-eyes

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Izzy Roberts-Orr

The women with the sad eyes are usually the sexiest.
New moons rolling around in their heads. Big dumb
pools you can dive into. The moon doesn’t speak
much, so you can project your longings onto her. Try
picking her out of the sky like a cherry, go on. Wrap
your tongue around the stalk of her one huge glaring
eye and see if you can tie the knot. Tongue dexterity
is a skill they teach in school. The tide of you pulls
like a dry rope, straining against cargo. Despair is
the look of the season. Heart rolling around inside
you like a stubborn pebble. Peppercorn of need.

They say these girls possessed a single eye.
Dropped to the bottom of the ocean, as if into
a glass. Half empty and filling rapidly with salt.
A thousand feet below the ocean, looking up
at things that don’t exist yet. You can’t get inside
someone else’s eyes and see through them. You
can work at rage all your life, and still have
nothing to show for it. What a terrific waste
of time, trying to make violent things beautiful.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Tongue

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Lisa Gorton

‘One unhappy day I was called to see
the Benois Madonna—
I found myself confronted by a young woman
with a bald forehead and puffed cheeks,
a toothless smile, blear eyes, and a furrowed throat—
And yet I had to acknowledge
that this painful affair was the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
It was hard, but the effort freed me,
and the indignation I felt
gave me the resolution to proclaim my freedom’—
—Bernard Berenson

TONGUE
‘ —bre 1478 I began the two Virgin Marys’
—Leonardo da Vinci

The Madonna of the Flowers has a line

of black behind her teeth—The tongue

in its dark laps air—‘and by that the sounding

out of all the names of things is’—

On her lap the child is catching at the pale

flowers in her hand raised now into the light

of that bare window cut through stone

at the back, filled with nothing but sky—

its lead-white thinly over black—Flowers

of the cross, cruciferae, bittercress—the child’s

hand is black along its knuckles where it

reaches to catch those pale flowers foreshadowing

death his mother hands to him—first

begotten of the dead—his dying already growing

through his hand’s flesh—‘When you begin

the hand from within first separate all the bones

a little’—Young Lorenzo di Credi in his

imitation had the child take an acorn righteousness

out of his mother’s hand—the child’s hand

of a corpse in the still light of that soundless room

where the window has a city in it and in the corner

her bed is made—‘When I made a Christ Child

you put me in prison’—Its stained walls, patterns

of joined stone—a landscape complete with

mountains, battles, faces, clouds—‘A thing miraculous’—

its blank surface opening into a window of dawn

light that is touchable, originary—‘The sun has never

seen a shadow’—A stone room held between

that light and this—a watcher standing in the doorway

in the place of light that casts its shadow back

across her mouth, her ear, the child’s right hand, right foot—

marking on them the lamb of the trespass offering—

blood where its shadows are—as that metal driven

through her ear means I will not go out free—A window

of sky in the shape of a diptych which will be painted in—

a Pietà, a child tearing flowers—‘The first drawing

was the outline of a shadow on a wall’—Now these

figures ‘clothed in light and darkness’ round forwards

into the light of its window reversed—history,

prophecy meeting in its stone room—At the crossing place

her gem—like water closed in glass—holds light

where in opaque things light’s shadows are and is

indifferent, afloat inside its curve, lit against

and leashed to any watcher’s eye—incloses

a room above their turning hands—a nearly

conceivable place in which the doorway’s reflection

invents what could be a window at the back

where its two shadows wait and its bittercress changes

into pale points of light—a single pearl there

making the palle—its heraldry hung upon abyss—

how such lustres move to meet and equal always

the distance of any watcher’s eye, its unassimilable

contrary and end—Encircling it the fifteen pearls

of her suffering are to be counted over repeatedly—

blood in her mouth—the tongue in its dark laps air—

The ‘Madonna of the Flowers’ is sometimes called the Benois Madonna. This poem’s quotations come from Samuels, Ernest and Samuels, Jayne Newcomer, Bernard Berenson, the making of a legend (Belknap Press, 1987) and from Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks (translated by Jean Paul Richter, selected by Irma Richer, OUP, 1952; 2008) and from the Book of Isaiah. The Lorenzo di Credi painting is his ‘Madonna with the Christ Child and Saint John the Baptist’ in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

They Sung Us

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Kirli Saunders

The Old People rain smiles
for their song
which brought us to be
here now

their glee moves in me

like river mint picked
and crushed on the breeze

magpie gargle and waddle
carefree

like in-land pearls
mussel flesh agleam

dewy fresh cut scar tree

like billy tea
strong, black, sweet

waratah stained flame
pop-crackle-simmering

eucalyptus smoke
from coolamon
billowing

until we’re clean

like estuary fish
both upstream
and one with the sea
and her expanse

like full moonbows
guarantee-ing
we see
what this means
for us now

and reap what they
sewed when they sung

this moment
into being.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Chosen Family Sequence

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Vahni Capildeo

For Josie

I. AT THE TABLE

my name in your mouth is
appalling
my name in your mouth is
exceptional
my name in your mouth is
overwhelm
my name in your mouth is
you
and my name in your mouth is
why
why why

II. IN THE LIVING ROOM

a hole no bigger than a pencil
than my snappiest fingerbone
and the darling the snub and corny
darling never a word expected
gone.
we find our kindness our children
our warm sand company our best strange
at the littlest scale of living
things that think unlike our most loving.
floorboards like muscovado sugar
melt. and stick. and sweep. and burn. like tears
in rope someone else was holding. gone.

III. AND THEN THEY REALIZED

[ ] is like
is
like a room when the moment when
the forbidden terrier
jumps reckless of injury
opens the door at a silent rush
bedside kneels up folds paws
turns a stern eye on the feverish patient
and the ghost of the dirty-faced heedless boy
and the work-pale girl who does not mean well

[ ] is like
is
like a family when the time when
the ingenious labrador
races into the car
dangling the pit viper he caught
live as a gift
and delighted by the shrieking
brings more and more
activity snakes to his pack

[ ] is like
is
like a road when like the winter when
the molossive pupper
herds the determinedly solitary walker
happily
to be even more happily
unnecessarily
saved
in the snow

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

CENTURY INFINITY

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Bella Li

 
 

 
 
 
 

ENTER

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Three Elegies

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Kris Hemensley

TOPOGRAPHY

(31-10-20)

Westgarth 11-25 a.m.
“change here…” (for yesteryear —broad brush
cliche but aspects-of OK —argue forever
the truth of ‘here & now’ —a grounding
apparently without air —
[REVERSE Separation St —> Westgarth
as tho ‘elsewhere’ & ‘before’ banished —
anticipate rejoinder: is how & why ‘self’
vanishes in the Eastern way —(slowly
last dip down to the ‘Garth —
the Good Earth is maybe only the familiar —
(an age since i’d thought of Chris Torrance
but did simultaneously as Robert Hogg presents
Facebook photo of Chris’s 1968 Ferry Press
GREEN ORANGE PURPLE RED’s cover —
right here & now again! —whom Tim at Grosseteste
thought i could contact —might share best part
of a world view in England ’69 —brews his own
Tim said (in a future biopic seen drunk among
fallen apples in the shade of drooping
branches shot by sunshine interspersing
afternoon rainclouds in a scene
from unmade Peter Greenaway film —
heroically bucolic (A Vision (nothing
as complex as 1970’s first trip featuring
Dave Rogers’ “fifty-thousand Rembrandts
in the sky” on Southampton Common nor my
ecstatic understanding that his walking around
& around a particular oak politically
his ‘territory’ and psychologically
his ‘terror-tree’ (astoundingly find the book’s signed
from Chris “to Kris with best wishes 11/11/69” —
black biro on quality off-white paper —
such accessibility elicits tears —
tears strips off grandiloquence
[REVERSE
Westgarth alighting (where
have i been? —fifty years & counting —
steps —drifts —of such disjunction can’t imagine
anything so coherent as “life” supposes
(& where has Chris been or Bob Hogg come to that?
if not here —
here! —
always here

oOo

TOPOGRAPHY

22/11/21 Northcote — All Nations Park back
of Coles shopping plaza —Degani’s take-
away coffee or la famiglia dine-in bespoke
pizza cold-drinks cappuccino cream-pastries —
sit on bench beyond cafe where Pi O joked
“old Greeks” decamped —out of dark
interior looking back from sun bathed park
an ululating moozik —name it rebetika
as if old Greek except for momentary oblique
must be Italian —neither Turk nor Iraq/
Baghdadi descanting Ahmed Hashim’s bark
at same moon & stars same night —
wine-all-gone ache as any might
wake with —too broke too tired too late
to buy more —would sooner croak
than beg —here in this world its flocks
of beggars -slipping stratae agreed- hacks
with pens & notebooks the poets of Bachus’
house temple his devotees —mine too
(Mike Dugan in ’68 urging on us Hal Porter’s
“Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony”
in midst of Liverpool Scene & Beats at least
to know past & present Melbourne he said —
read again now to know our late friend?
(jump genre & generation —jump pages
(disbelieved the 6th while signing Covid register
at Degani’s retraced to the 3rd —but it’s December
14th! (tell whom now? the adjacent
that is the necessary ear —who can i tell?
(thank you loves —comrades —the interminable
hollow hour (Heather: “this broken night” —
Chrissie: “our embattled family” —
shock horror
-im memoriam-
John Nolan died Dec 13th
Mattie: “big brother to us Godboys, forever
grateful” [topography rewritten
9/12 —corrections
& additions —
(wiser after the event —
(always tell everything
Dec 15, ’21
fin

oOo

TOPOGRAPHY

2-iii-22

i.m. Jordie Albiston (because your name’s now Forlorn
because this place is where Neglect now decamps
because for all i try cannot distinguish your star in
afternoon’s thunder-beclouded Melbourne sky
(because Doug Oliver wrote me back-when
about our babe’s heart perforation —
told us to hang in Rett & i —bade us love &
courage —learned from his own experience —
i pick his pocket here for the enflamed word
‘HARM’ (because whatever he used to be he’s red
toy engine’s driver now on same edge of All Nations Park
as daily arrive for coffee —stare at what fast becomes
emptiness —blurred parkland as tho’ naturally edged with
alternating European & native trees (because
toot-tooting in a language equidistant Thomas
Traherne & John Bunyan —i’m here to learn —
sink or swim —replace ‘or’ with ‘and’ (a Bourne-
mouth where angels pour forth like Melbourne
rain in this year’s coincidence with Lententime —
enter the Agony as Catherine found
to say —timely yet urgently
out of time (because first born’s
twice born —foresworn? (can’t find vital quotation
but if ‘KIND’ is its necessary contradiction
catch a line for Jordie Albiston —swain
despite never-the-twain —
“pretend to know how fully
she was alive; / from departure
at least learn how to arrive.” —
‘Uncollected Poems’ section
p169 published Allardyce
Barnett 1987 (March 4th
painstakingly enter the sea
turned-on by my Doc Ricketts
inlet —descended gingerly —imbibed
the smell of the sea all times’
memories —perched on edge
of rock realised the scent
on the air is seaweed —is seaweed’s —
sends me to the beach (“Stranger
on the Shore” (absent War —
Love & Lovers too (“Down around Biloxi
pretty girls are swimmin’ in the sea /
They all look like sisters in the ocean” —Jimmy
Buffett 1977 (motion only
subsuming all or any
oblivion —because any-
thing else right now
unknown

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Real

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Laura Jean McKay

Craig Henderson. You are the most attractive real estate agent in the region. When 47 year old Jessica and I see your sign on the highway, on the bus station, above the takeaway, we think about retirement. We tuck our chippies in our jackets and remember the time we saw you at the fancy New World. Jessica told you your own name and I said how we never see you at the Pack and Save. You inclined your head, just like on the poster. We looked to see if savings fell out. You’re set back from the road, Craig Henderson. You’re close to schools, shops and amenities. ‘You’ve got a good heat pump, Craig Henderson,’ Jessica whispers into the drizzled air at the bus stop billboard. The sign reads GET AHEAD and Jessica scratches JOB into the Perspex over your face with the key to our share house. If we don’t, someone who doesn’t understand you will. And Craig Henderson? We have questions. Are you perfect for a family? Are you a first time dream or an opportunity to upsize? Will we have no regrets? We’ve pooled our money. After the chips we have fifteen dollars thirty cents in the hand and nine hundred and forty one in the bank. But what do you want, Craig Henderson? Your golden hands. Your reflective face. Our jackets stink of hot oil but they’re warm.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Tongue of the Hidden

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Arnold Zable

She reads Tongue of the Hidden,
poems from the Divan,
at night, while locked up
with her infant daughter.
Guards patrol the corridors,
flash torches at all hours,
to appease their boredom
they mock the imprisoned.

She reads Tongue of the Hidden.
The women come to her now
in the walled quadrangle
where the inmates assemble
while their children run in circles.
‘Read to us,’ the women plead.
‘Relieve our thirst,
help kill the hours.’

She reads Tongue of the Hidden.
The walls have been breached,
a patch of sky is singing.
The women are weeping.
The verses release a chorus
of curbed voices,
lift the veil from their torment,
their tales of violation.

‘In our homelands,’
they tell their jailers,
‘we were held hostage.
They dumped us in the snow,
left us for dead, naked.
We came to you for help,
but you ignored our pleas,
walled us in prisons.’

She reads Tongue of the Hidden.
We come to her now
from all corners of the city,
follow procedure: electronic scans,
possessions in lockers.
The quadrangle is a rose garden,
the thorns wrapped in fragrance.
We draw the scent in — and listen.

On her release we bring wine,
place the bottle on the table.
‘I come from that city,’ she says.
‘Shiraz.’ Home to Hafiz,
the Wine-bringer,
Interpreter of Mysteries,
composer of the Divan.
Her Tongue of the Hidden.

We drink to the innocent
who still count the lost hours;
to the women who still
gather in the quadrangle
while their children run in circles.
To the voices that have been stilled:
the tongues that long to unveil
the worlds of the hidden.

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Submission to Cordite 108: DEDICATION

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Lou Garcia-Dolnik

This issue asks for your devotions, your gestures of esteem and affection, your hot takes on the solemn and fanatical. It delights in submissions seeking abandonment and surrender to a goal or cause.

This issue will also explore how people, places and things are set apart, elevated, given story and purpose. Bring your lyrical adorations spanning the earnest and satirical, your odes, toasts, homages and exaltations, as well poems that decode ceremonious inscriptions, plaques, prefixes, para-texts, subtweets, tokens and tokenism.

This issue asks how DEDICATION shapes your world. Is it motivated by theatrics or humility?

Either way, we wish we had yours.

This podcast sheds some insight on how Cordite Poetry Review (and Cordite Books) works.

Submission to Cordite 108: OPEN closes 11.59pm Melbourne time Sunday, 4 December 2022.

Please note:

  1. The guest editor(s) has sovereign selection choice for all poems submitted.
  2. Masthead editors will also contribute to the issue.
  3. We will only read submissions sent during our official submission periods.
  4. Please place up to three (3) poems in one (1) Word, RTF or PDF document (unless specifically noted otherwise for special issues), with no identifying details in the document itself.
  5. We are not able to offer feedback on individual poems.
  6. Submissions will only be accepted via Submittable …

submit


Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , ,

Before You Go

Posted on September 1, 2022 by Sophia Walsh

The other night I had a dream about Esther being loved-up at a party with her ex. When I woke in the middle of night I thought something like life is a window through which I look which I thought was worth writing down when of course, it wasn’t really. I sprang out of bed, into the loungeroom, turning on the light and waking up Max, just to write. Sometimes it feels like everything, still, is always about Esther. Calling things off is all well and good until I see someone else falling in love with Esther the way I fell in love with Esther as if we were sixteen again. On the telly a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle cruises down a hill. We are sitting on the couch. When it reaches the bottom of the hill a series of declarative sentences appear in Times New Roman: kiss the person seated next to you fall from the couch to the hardwood floors roll around like that until someone catches you and so that is what we did and before I knew it, you were gone. Every experience henceforth has been in order to emulate this couch experience with you, Esther. Sometimes I get so jealous insecurities should be fleeting or else they are not hot you taught me so much about myself and the world that keeps turning around me. Do you remember the knife I bought you with your name on the handle? I walked to the engravers in the rain down Little Collins Street where everyone is rich in money but I am rich in love. I wish you’d take me upstate like how we’d talk about it’s too bad I’m far away from you now, being here in Melbourne. I have many regrets I’ll have you know and one of them is never telling you I love you that one last time I’m crying now I’m a lot more sensitive than I realise. I’ll also have you know that Max shaves my legs with a straight razor because she is a barber and I love her and she loves me. Wherever I am without you, you appear behind me, flashing a knife. The fan is whirring loud in the loungeroom. I am alone on the couch listening to HTRK. Max is at work she is always at work and when she gets home we will lick chocolate sauce off each other’s pussies and it will be like I was never even crying.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged

2022 Queensland Poetry Val Vallis Award Winners

Posted on September 1, 2022 by Lucy Van

Dan Hogan has won the 2022 Queensland Poetry Val Vallis Prize with ‘Aduantas’; Sophia Walsh wins 2nd prize with ‘Before You Go’ and Bethany Stapleton wins the Highest Queensland entry for ‘The Botanist’.

Dan Hogan

This brilliant, idiosyncratic, surrealist poem called to us from amongst the poems we had shortlisted, refusing to be forgotten. There is something jarring, even off-kilter about this poem, which suits the meaning of the title: that strange feeling of fear or loneliness in an unfamiliar surrounding. The words are intriguing tangents from the expected. What exactly is ‘Nondescript respite’ or ‘Misfired association’ or more importantly ’emotes homologous’? It doesn’t matter, the whole makes a strange compelling sense. There is an element of playful ambiguity in this poem, but coupled with the anger just under the surface, the result is bittersweet, like the honey drunk by the narrator. A deserving winner.

Sophia Walsh

This lyrical prose poem is a low pitched yet acute portrayal of the fever of romantic desire. The madness of longing is rendered here in run-on, breathless lines, rapid shifts in modes of address, and a discombobulating shuttling of time. In all this, and especially in its triangulated arrangement of desire, the poem recalls the lyrical (il)logic of Sappho. The poem’s jumpcut series of moments—ecstatic, disconsolate, brooding, longing—proceeds through a deceptively simple, judiciously selected vernacular vocabulary and image repertoire. This only serves to highlight the skill of the poet, who brings something singular and specific into an enduring tradition of love poetry—often attempted, though not often realised as fully as this. An effortless and innovative take on an ancient art.

Bethany Stapleton

The concrete, organic expression of this poem belies its artistry. What seems a straightforward poem about a certain person, place and time (Veronica, Fitzroy, the early 2000s) opens onto deeper provocations. What does it mean to observe the world closely, to linger on small things (‘a sure eye and a crate of seedlings’)? What does it mean to collect, polish, ruminate, and care? The artistry of the poet chimes its answer in crisp, stylish lines (‘mementos catalogued, tied up in black’) in this outstanding study of human fascination.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , , , ,

The Botanist

Posted on September 1, 2022 by Bethany Stapleton

Moving on from the north
in the new millennium, with rolls of film,
a sure eye and a crate of seedlings,
Veronica settled herself in Fitzroy;
strewn with leaves shaped like Canada,
and symbols of the eco conscious,
bullied into a corner – filling for cheap coverlets.
Etched on her thighs are established ciphers
of belief, their shadows held fast,
on kitchen chairs in the Leonard Cohen style.
Seedpods, bark and blooms are recorded
in her sketch book, thick with expectation
and dated in reference to the moon’s phases
or astrological arrangement, her own
orrery with planets fixed in copper rings.

She keeps the seasons close;
mementos catalogued, tied up in black
inked pictographs down her chest
or hand-crafted envelopes pressed with petals.
Behind toilet door, in amber light
of salt lamp, insects of the order Odonata
are pinned – machines in formation
on paper aircraft carrier.
When street lights limn silhouettes
with phosphorescence,
masters of photosynthesis and fecundity
unfold shadows, spilling maps
of ancient rivers and their tributaries.
She traces these spectres
with lipstick over 1960’s wallpaper:
felt diamonds, or gold floral. Using the fork
of a confluence to gain purchase
she moves to the ceiling to capture
her weightlessness and fear – a night garden hangs,
held by threads, perfect as a major fifth.

Her biography, left like evidence
in a Seoul police box; of button-quail,
baskets woven from raspberry cane, and boots
laced with vine, draws her back
to the borrowed light before sun arrives.
In the laundry; beakers, burner, tubes,
distil oils from citrus and flowers.
Plumes of cirrus flow into bottles;
russet, Polish blue or clear as rain.
So with fresh bergamot massaged into her scalp
and ylang-ylang burning on kitchen sill,
Veronica collects information on seasons
watching from Adirondack for the first
of the morning bees, tattooed with braille,
wings splashing behind dark eyes.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged