Skiing on Mars

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Angela Gardner

into vapour clouds. it doesn’t get faster
with less or flourish. we ski in private raptures
of snowfall that dematerialises before us.
unresponsive volcanic peaks, laughing at the glide
and atmosphere. traverse postcard views
saying, they bruise while we’re inside the position
of its poles on the planet Mars, the inclination
of its axis, our heads of snow. the remarkable
appearances at the polar regions between
persistence and persistent field where wind rushes
data, weight (what weight there is) in this lack
so water sublimes. how everything slurs into vapour.
stoppered outer layer spacesuit not too loose
or bulky you sweep to the left through continuous
dark until two tiny lit moons of fear and panic
rise in your eyes. we skate over transparent frosted
dry-ice fields into unstable yellow clouds. who cares
if we can never leave? the dust storm passes
as orange snow dematerialises before us with less
flourish in temperatures lower than we have ever known.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

In Midsummer Blues

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Palash Mahmud

Yesterday I stalked my sigh till the end of the shore.
Borrowed the pattern as like an autumn dew
Sneaks the lashes of the couch grasses.

Like a crumble of a stone glides deep down in a pond,
Sibilant burst out from the violence, breaking
The array of slick algae, peeling the skin of water off.

When crossing a filling station near
the marine drive road, I met a sigh
once was mine, a splintered face.

Waiting since I left behind. It led me to
An Egyptian Tamarisk tree where it bridles at night.
En route I came across a groan of my father

Dead long ago, turning turtle on beach sands, busking
In midsummer blues. Showed me the catalogue
Of sorrows it lived in this meddling world. Told me

If our groans cannot swing their moods
With the shadows of dangling leaves on the waves,
Our sighs turn into whispers making buzz in our hearts.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Postamble

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Catherine McCredie

A new rocking chair
You can set your watch by its beats
when Grandmother sits in it
like Cleopatra in her canoe
in the crocodiled wild

Thanks for finding it sorry it was indecipherable
sorry you couldn’t find it

looking at landscapes
you don’t even know is
gawping

Grandmother likes to stay put
You can buy a ticket from the train conductor
or coach driver

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

#NatureIsHealing

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Rae White

Ibis are looking cleaner, snowier
when I go on my designated walks.
Less plump, more gloss (like they’ve bathed

in the very best hair conditioner.)
I don’t remember the last time
I showered. But I smell like exercise

and exercise is acceptable and jigsaws
are legal and groceries are constitutional.
If I get my groceries delivered, who else

do I put at risk? I join a mutual aid group,
cook food in bulk in my home, ladle serves
into name-labeled containers

and it smells like the preface to a potluck
in the park. (Bring a plate, bring a friend.)
I haven’t hugged my friends

in months. I’ve attended too many
Zoom funerals. (Don’t forget, turn video off
when you cry.) I want that damp smell

of early morning air, overturned soil,
brine of tears. I haven’t been misgendered
in months. The jolt of a pause before

a missing pronoun gasps me back
to the present like an echo.
I think I’ve been dis-

-associating. I think the glare around me
is too bright, as the person
with the dog tells us we’re both

‘good girls’. (I think I’m very tired.)
I just want that fabric softener smell
of home. I just want to go home.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Ngambri

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Peter Cameron

1

A convincing ground fort
prepares its shaded mask.
Foreign imaged constrictions
colonise a long capital
breaking ground circles
into lines of abstraction.

Ancient low singing hills
are wreathed with pedestal
monuments to a state liturgy.

Into dry air a gum leaf drops
spinning an old rising track
flanked in silver sepia trees
fading a green golden sun.

Puffed players perform a
masque parlé de l’absurde
winding vile blindness
against relational integrity.
Coercively controlled casings
shade mind consumed
by material mined.

I learned earth is good
clean cover is mother
I belong. You teach dirt
needs consecration by human
blood and innocent genitalia.

Your red angle bricks cut
out a ferocious periphery
to suffocate a gated nation.
From unseen hides ensouled
we still drain blood to satiate a
cross inflated body of space.

After long-time soaking
earthy flora, Sun restores
her gift whilst smudging clean
spaces between movement.

Whose time is it
when you’re being
where you are?

Some quietly listen to
grandmother trees gathering
old weaving pattern circles.

2

Between watery layers
earth spirits inject
a thin air seam across
a wide Ngarigo plain.
A pale morning moon
rides low in your chalky sky.

Capital ship constructions
lie behind state circles,
fenced views exuding
exotic presumption.

Sanctions on board
a sinking Babel leak
as required extruding
contagion, setting sales.
Ungrounded in believing no place
but yearning to cocoon,
a hided herd barricades
in fear of future reform.

Bound unsound
faltering vaulted
logic unravels in slathers
of sly soporific slurs.
Unseen convoluting pathways
continue their common flows.

Over hoary green dappled streams
mill slicing turbines gyrate
their flash charging protest
of soured powers.
Ransacked lands need care.
Mirrors echo in layers of
circuit closing madness.

Smudge pattern faces peer
through your dim window
glass forever minding the
corners until you turn.

A cast shell of identity splits
concealing its being in others.
Do you stay the old parts together
or newly live with case expelled?

Currawongs call across faun
roos watching passing cars.
Night gathers into itself
slowly preparing space
for dark opening stars.

Wend your way deeply into
broad porous boundaries
knowing centrally the sensuous.
A receptive belly gently
lands a felt surround
bringing your beginning.
Seeds flourish in
bright resolution.
We tender our hands to
stone rafts in stone skies.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Uninitiation

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Luke Patterson

to the hum of a subaru 4×4
they invent an escape

the uncles have it all planned
criss-crossing old lines
where that big serpent story
slithers west

a comic opera of black men
a wallaby and a brolga
and a boy emu dulled
with a too-long-in-the-colony look
follow highway lined scar
trees deep into sky country

from the back seat
boy takes in the mono-crop patchwork
picture-view flickering fields
weeping paterson’s curse
black dirt to red dirt
little dust devils curl their grins
in the tailwind

unc’ brolga notes how mulga
gently lifts from the horizon
a trick of that warm seasonal air
and begins a belly-song
navigating toward his mother’s totem
sparrow-hawks circling
in silent accompaniment
boy emu commits the rocky contours
of melody to memory

they find a place to camp
cut wood for the inner circle
for carving boy’s first war-boondi

in his crypto-tongue
unc’ wallaby
tells a tenuous fable

of those petrified great heroes
and villains painted ignobly
into landscape
as archetype
of reconciled australia
as blue
in a sea-foam girt
as reconciled
for show
for what
all to crack open
the few biomes left looking
for a composer-in-residence

a whittled boy
young and free
strung with another’s culture
begins to see the ground
beneath him
covered with axe heads
sees the scabs of a wattle riot
overflowing ruins
hears the hidden accents
inscribed in homelands he always knew

evening edges them fireside
quiet boy emu
uncle wallaby and brolga
lick into shape
clubs made from gidj’
sounds of metal on wood
fill the nocturnal ethers

uncles leave
their dreamcraft unfinished
for the boy
tell him the rest of the story-pattern
can be found in the stars
and tomorrow…

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Chasing Apricots

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Suzanne Claridge
I.

My thumbs press into the tip of an apricot, splitting its rounded body in half. I place a bet with myself on which side the stone of this stone-fruit will stick to – will it be to the right or to the left?

An apricot is:

a small, soft, round fruit

with yellowish-orange flesh

and    a          stone    inside

One half of the apricot cusps the stone. The stone nestles against the yellowish-orange flesh. The little spoon protected by the big spoon. Two halves fit perfectly in the palm of my hand.

While examining the apricot, I imagine it as a hollow shell – as if it were the shell of an oyster. Except, unlike an oysters’ shell, the apricot is soft and delicate. Oysters can be soft, too, but they are unlike apricots. Firstly, apricots are a fruit of the earth, not of the sea; secondly, we do not throw away the oysters’ pearl.

II.

Here in so-called Australia, fresh apricots are in season during the summer months of November to January. Dried apricots are available all-year round. The seasonal quality demands a period of hibernation. A temporary death before bearing fruit.

III.

God forbade Adam and Eve eating fruit from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. The serpent assured them that consuming the forbidden fruit would not lead to their deaths but to knowledge, granting them the ability to distinguish between good and evil, a status that gods reserved for themselves:

              ‘the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely
              die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
              then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,
              knowing good and evil’ – (Genesis 3: 4-5).

Caving into temptation, their disobedience marked the origins of inherited sin.

In a Portuguese poem Sou um guardador de rabanhos, translated to English as I Am A Shepherd, Fernando Pessoa wrote:

              ‘to think a flower is to see it, and smell it, and to eat a
              fruit is to know its meaning.’1

to eat a fruit is to know its meaning

What is your meaning, apricot?

to eat a fruit is to know its meaning

I consume you, what will I know of you?

I sit with the apricot and resist the tendency for passive digestion, where sustenance is aided alongside superficial entertainment and doom-scrolling. Binge-watching and binge-eating is an erasure of nourishment.

Food is sacred. Food is historical.

I wonder, is regeneration karmic?

IV.

I think about the etymological and geographical contentions around the origins of apricots, how their historical roots are traced to trading along the Silk Roads.

Oracle bones dating back to the Sang Dynasty (c. 1558-1046 BC) were found to bear the ancient Chinese symbol for the apricot.2 Shoulder blades of oxen or the plastron of turtles were prepared and used for methods of divination, engraved with inscriptions for a foretold destiny. Engravings of something living against the remnants of something dead.

V

During Ramadan season, Amardine (a dried apricot paste imported from Damascus) is used to make a juice to break the period of fasting or to savour during the festive time after sundown. Translated into Arabic, amardine means “moon of the faith”.

VI

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed apricot cocktails in the company of their friends in French cafes. The taste of the apricot also an elixir for existentialists.

VII

American soldiers during the Vietnam War grew suspicious of apricots. They feared them as an omen. These men carried the fruits’ preserved, and supposedly jinxed, bodies into a warzone. Their suspicions grew from a series of coincidences. They started to warn against the consumption of apricots – especially around tanks.

VIII

The Romans, learning of the apricot during the 1st century A.D, dubbed it praecocum, the “precocious one”. In Latin, ‘precocious’ is coupled with the prefix prae-, meaning “ahead of”, and the verb coquere, meaning “to cook” or “to ripen”. Together, these terms form the adjective, “praecox”, meaning “early ripening” or “premature”. In the field of medicine, the word ‘precocious’ is coupled with the word ‘puberty’ – paired together as a medical term to diagnose early developments of physical maturity in children.

IX

André Aciman’s Call me by your name disentangles the sweet and sticky histories of apricots and peaches – both different, but two of the same. A charged desire between an adolescent boy and a graduate student. A mediator of power between blossoming and early ripening.

X

Praecocum.
Cum. Early ripening. Premature. Praecox. Cocks.

Where do you fit? Where do you belong? Who bears claim to your or(gasm)/igins?

You are divine moonlight. A social elixir. A source of magic that arouses suspicion. A malleable category to fulfil summer romances.

XI.

I was bound to a habit of fixating on my inherent duality. I imagined my own flesh, torn in half, examined in the palms of those who decide where the dividing line should be; locating where to make the slice, the incision, the clean-cut.

Which one of my limbs belongs where?

The safety of remaining a solitary stone falsely promised a protection from harm. I want to allow the flesh to soften but not bruise. The stone is a grounding centre. It is a gravitational pull. I am docked to a harbour.

I have a stone centre, a pearl. It will not be discarded.

1 Fernando Pessoa, I am a Shepherd.
2 Robert Spengler. Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the foods we eat, (2019).

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

I stand

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Jane Gibian

in the place where I began, many arms
now broad and twisted
high crown overlooking all

but the tallest siblings of smooth-barked apple,
rough-barked grey gum

surrounded by cliff and rock:
my protector, my tormentor

upper limbs bathe
in sunlight, roseate skin uncloaked
beneath darker peelings

visitors both subtle and loud pass through
three claws and two
two legs and four

intermittent avian chatter
a silent white moth
wings folded at rest

steeled claws following forked reptile tongue

ribbed capsules mingle
with a neighbour’s clusters of seven gumnuts:
seven cups of blossom erupt beneath
seven pointed caps

surge of sap through xylem and phloem

leaf-drum
of distant thunder

a trickle of rain over curved spines, sweeping freshness
into the bark litter
that gathers softly at our base

runnels of sweet water
pool around the furthest roots

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Last Light on the Great Divide

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Simone King

As the day dusks, the bald foothills flare
with purple-orange light. The moon hangs low
above the mountains, and between them mauve
smoke pulls daylight’s flesh from night’s spine.

The plains are bare except for sedge and torqued
gums. Cockatoos screech, those punks of the bush,
demanding more of the light. Between what was
and what will come, a liminal dreamscape,

no, a night terror. The Broken River’s dammed
belly bulges at Lake Nillahcootie, digesting
the skeletons of flood-drowned red gums. Earth
still carries all that has been cleared away.

The sun plunges and is gone. The cool breath
of night descends and the land shivers.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

through the dust

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Wren Goderie
your blood knows the journey your body seeks,

the journey I am about to unmake.


under my eyelids, the vivid flicker:

the moths stir, flutter one last time in a

dance you were just now in the middle of.

see yourself moving, but not what moves you —

a song. perhaps it came from my mouth. there,

each syllable a bit of dust from wings.


covered in a cloak of wings, hear the song —

such a lovely wing-beaty quality.

look up and see my lovers dance above

me lightly, like the dust we’re both made of.

fill the serious space in the middle

with some of your poetry. that’ll make

curving lines ending in various points —

a fire. I will crack this dream wide open,

walk the path raw. our very own Silk Road

crawling behind twitchy eyelids, slow walk

back to an older conscience, a raw awe.


speak your way back to the beginning, when

the earth’s crust scorched our feet, the unremitting

fire smoldering at the tips of our tongues.

reach towards the light like silence reaches.

we almost hear the cut-and-paste

language — though a thought walks two paths at once,

twin bright-lit wings, identically shaped;

smile on her face and a fire in her heart,

to bend the poets from their comet course

with smoky kisses and melt with the heat.

the caterpillar is mostly liquid,

dissolving in amniotic syntax.

with this transformation, gone is my shame.

a world emptied of memories but one,

for all the light in the world to pass through.


those heavy wingbeats in the night become

the land of birth brightness of star and scream;

a newborn cries, and somewhere a mother

tongue kicks consonants like a soccer ball,

kicks round the universe when the earth tips

words into a bag & shake them, arrange

them with ease. the earth swallows me in turn.


back to the start, before you stepped into the

middle of an apocalypse, but we

few who choose to linger in this echo

think we can outwit the end — play god with

words that can be used over and over,

recite the words without translating them…


howling incandescent hymns…


listen, o poet, to this marvel of

messages into the air, light patterns

we can’t compute as we gaze into this

battery powered fake tealight candle.

Evelyn Araluen, Decolonial Research Methodology after the Bogong Moth

A.J. Elsequence, The Sorrows of Young Hippocrates


Vanessa Page, Moths

Joanna Stanlake, Icarus

James Midgley, Dance

Shastra Deo, Walkthrough

Dorothea Rosa Herliany / Harry Aveling, Married to a Knife

James McCorkle, Franklin’s Bees


Omar Sakr, Brothers

Michael Farrell, Mysteries of the South Coast

Rosie Brodie, pussy sand

Lucy Morgan, to be held is where hope lies

Samantha Walton, poem for you

Petronius, Satyricon (quoted by Caitlynn Cummings)

Caitlynn Cummings, Mezzo Millemetro

Davide Angelo, Year Zero

Tanya Evanson, Finishing Salt

Soyini Ayanna Forde, Poem for a Gunman

Joel M Toledo, A Record Year for Rainfall


Lisa Suhair Majaj, Journey

David Adès, A Line In The Sand

Ralph Fonte, Another Gospel of Fire

Lynley Edmeades, The Kangaroos

Geoff Page, The Anthologist

Diane Glancy, Tripod

Atsuro Riley, Diorama

Maya Hodge, daughters of the sea, sun and sand

Jean-Baptiste Cabaud / Jan Owen, The shepherdesses painted in blue

Sarah Rose-Cherry, she / he / they. you (I / we)

Jonno Revanche, Not ever

Francesca Lysette, A DREAM OF THE CYBORG AS METAPHOR…

Lucy Alexander, Crow

Hannah Jenkins, Enderman’s Lament

Dženana Vucic, natural sciences trivia


Alice Blackwood, The Bogongs

Ricardo M de Ungria, ɫ i b a w

Ohan Hominis, Beneath A City

Christine Howe, Somewhere in the Suburbs

Pip Smith, On the 36th Floor

Julie Chevalier, more work needed to make a dadaist poem

Lisa Jacobson, All Things


Vanessa Page, The Instinct of Sharks

Himaja Wijesinghe, if he asks you where you’re from

Dakota Feirer, Heal Country

Emily Collyer, With the fishes

Samuel Wagan Watson, Dust and Drag

Jennifer Compton, Under the House


Mathew Bate, Little Hank and I


Anthony DiMatteo, Penelope’s Poet

John Hawke, The Conscience of Avimael Guzman

Rachael Mead, The Waterfall

Lore White, I could eat LIGHTNING

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

My Film Pitch

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Sarah Hall
the context is some yeah right future where ethnographic values endure. a cyclopsian archeologist pulled from the brainstorm scrapbox of a Hollywood board meeting chances on a laptop powered by remnant coronaviral heat or some other time-stamped disaster and the set designer hangs turtles with straws up their noses representing just a momentary art phase in the destruction of our planet. the bones of a glass-bottom boat drift over coral graveyards and brass statues of colonial men bob out the sunroof of Shakira’s old Tesla in this: the brave new ocean. motorised Uniqlo mannequins, those once-apostles of the normcore zeitgeist now dressed in seaweed board shorts, a keyboard headpiece and a skyscraper window shard wedged in the side like a baby on the hip are still twirling like they once did in the flagship but now up on the great pacific garbage patch, a bluetooth mouse for a pet, floating around. the critics will remark how all these particular combinations of scrap oscillated into companionship by that great tidal conductor make them think of RhymeZone where chamois met with chutzpah and Tim Tam lay with syntagm, minced ham, swim team and San Tomé. I suppose the clincher for some viewers will be simply contemplating the inevitable death of Shakira, looking down from the film momentarily to nostalgically scroll through Super Bowl highlights, but as for the cyclops’ character development and given that despite growing ACAB attitudes detectives are still largely portrayed with panache cinematically, it will have complexity, and maybe even a referential Morpheus sunglass for the solitary eyeball. the writing process will be autopredictive and as a commentary on the fourth wall the screenwriter will be portrayed on screen in a Zoom breakout room decked in gumboots to the earlobes in a landfill of words. there she’ll sift through the stanzas for recyclables to trade for parts to fix the broken greenwash synonyms for a shallow retrospective on a world misnamed til the wind turbines got submerged by the sea and then we all thought of the same joke: I guess hydro’s the next big thing. the Ballina branch of the Hollywood board meeting decide to simplify the plot to make it more timely, accessible, punchy and narrative driven so the cyclops turns on the laptop from its steaming pile of keepcups, nurdles and perfectly preserved big macs and begins its quest to decode the 21st century from pure emoji
Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Lifelines

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

Memory is patchwork. The last thing
you recall is sky – a sudden bristling of
blue, a wild wobbling. Missteps prove
costly. You fall through the thick tulle
of algae and pond scum, plummeting
past the hyacinths and lilies, lime green
roots glowing, squiggling in the dark
like fluorescent strings of binary code.

You plunge through the vial of ink,
panic ballooning, as your legs churn
amniotic darkness, sinking, sinking,
till at long last a demigod grabs your
placenta hair. You break the surface.

Splayed on firm earth your nostrils
spew slime. Air inflates your alveoli
You wheeze back to life. With bleary
eyes you trace the mocha arc on your
left hand, the old clairvoyant woman’s
words ringing loud and true: Strange,
this melding of mounds, this ebony dip,
this meandering pace of your lifeline.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Walking in Isolation (III)

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Lachlan Brown

what plinth-moment is this, allowing the display of bark:
twisted, straight, or notched with achievements? a swing-
set attaches pathways to opportunities, weaving shadow-
lines into an iron crown. & the real presence logs
in each morning by walking poems around the rocks,
alert to small movements beneath a crumpled tarp-.


-aulin. part-serpent, part windsmith, the shroud-tarp
wraps sections of darkness into itself. bite worsens bark,
at least in this imagined scenario, tripping on sharp rocks
in the rush to hospital or clinic, struck heel swing-
ing with painful defiance. then there’s a line of cut logs,
mute & afraid, like bystanders or disciples in shadow,


having denied everything by the fireside. each shadow
betrays its origins in the bruise of sky, like the flat tarp
strung up as background. heading out beyond the logs
of prophecy there’s a river & a tree, yet, the claim of bark
is the claim of a textured present. the expedition must swing.
between corrugations & smooth surfaces, between rocks


& hill-sliced moments. if people mute themselves, the rocks
will cry out. but if they unmute, then the hungry shadow-
folk gather on the edges of screen. knowing this, the swing
rises to touch the horizon, pausing for a second as the tarp
flaps with a measure of acclaim. a gap in the tree’s bark
can grasp the universe in its ocular supremacy, staring down logs


that have been portioned & measured. the tiny webcam logs
its own reality, light glinting outside the terms of reference. rocks
& stones like boxes ready to be ticked. mene mene… dogs bark
at the sight of a disembodied hand, those scrawled orders, shadows
of untranslated dawn in handwritten snatches. meme meme… it’s a tarp!
typo or textual variant, sun grasps pen at a banquet, time swing-


ing in massive arcs, psalming the hundreds of open tabs where swing
voters weigh the future. thanks to democracy then, the camera that logs
discontent, gifting small victories like sparrows. note the forensic tarp
descending as though the world consisted of sheer evidence, as rocks
tumble down the hillside, exiting the administration’s bubble, shadow-
blending the unthinking with the unthinkable. unruly grass, hard bark,


unused swing-set: what untraveled route sighs in the billowing tarp?
what shifts with the wind’s reversals, as silent logs prepare their bark
for an offering & a shadow catches breath between the rocks?

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Stumbling upon a brick chimney shaft

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Jake Goetz

what can a butter
of sunlight smeared on a leaf
tell us about morality
or family? that the underside
is a night one can’t
differentiate from morning?

or if i filled a bag
with pebbles from the Yangtze
and told you to take them
to the end of the sky
would you find walking
bottomless?
or collapse
from exhaustion?

could you watch the way
words float through years
only to get stuck some-
where on an escarpment
in a mess of lantana and flax
drawing meaning out
from the senses unmeaning
in their essence to locate
the self in some planetary
syntax of symbols

in search one might say
to let letters loose
of logic

or to a logic
let loose of letters
opting instead
for simple transfers
tensing muscles in blood
like ferns in soil
the oomph and ahh
straining legs
farting and sweating
to ground a branch
to stumble upon

a

l g g

o i r

n a e
e n y
t
i b rooted beside
r a a brick chimney
o r shaft which
n k channelled air
down to the
Kemira Colliery
where coal was
cut from
Mt. Kiera
loaded onto
wagons and driven
down to Wollongong port
along a track you now walk
tracing a coal path
through Country

* * * * *


in 1982 BHP sought to sack
hundreds of Kemira’s workers
but in protest 31 miners
stayed underground for 16 days
while mass demonstrations
filled Wollongong’s streets
and a train took thousands
of workers to Canberra
where they protested against
the Fraser government’s apathy
toward the retrenchment

when the workers arrived at Parliament
ALP leaders Hayden and Hawke
were waiting to address them from a stage
while a flimsy barricade and a few police
stood defending Parliament House
but the workers swept past the stage
broke through the barricade stormed up
the steps of Parliament
and smashed their way through the doors
chanting ‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’
‘we want jobs’ ‘we want jobs’

* * * * *


Kemira Colliery coal works fatalities

1871 – John Cole, miner (fall of stone, leaving a wife and three children)
1871 – John Coombes, miner (killed by stone block whilst working with father-in-law, Thomas Allum)

1879 May 14th – Joseph Seal, miner (roof fall)
1880 Sep 24th – Thomas Allum, labourer (run over by wagon on incline)

1884 Sep 6th – Andrew Bell, miner (fall of coal)
1885 Nov 14th – Thomas Dumphy, miner (fall of coal)

1887 Jan 30th – Thomas Danby, wheeler (fall of coal)
1888 Oct 4th – Robert Kenning, points boy (run over by set)

1896 Aug 28th – James Goldrick, horse driver (wagon on incline)
1897 Sep 13th – Charles Benjamin Drew, shunter (crushed between wagon buffers)

1900 Oct 15th – Patrick Hayes (natural causes)
1906 Jul 10th – John Dobing, 71, brakeman (runaway skip)

1906 Sep 20th – John Dumphy, 35, miner (roof fall)
1908 Aug 31st – William McDonald, 56, Deputy (trip and fall)

1910 Mar 4th – Thomas Francis O’Brien, miner (heart failure)
1910 Mar 17th – Frederick Peterson, 30, miner (roof fall)

1912 Jan 19th – John Charles Wilson, 36, shiftman (fall of stone)
1915 Jun 17th – Joseph Hay, 53, miner (roof fall)

1930 Apr 15th – Frederick Walker, miner (fall of stone)
1939 Sept 18th – Antonio Carollo, shiftman (died from injuries)

1948 Nov 8th – Harold Whitehead, welder’s labourer (electrocution)
1949 May 25th – Keith Arnett, lamp man (crushed between battery loco and surface tipping ramp)

1950 Mar 28th – Eric James, coal cutter operator (crushed upon slipping under the coal cutter)
1951 Nov 15th – Walter Hurt, battery loco driver (fatal injuries when colliding with a derailed 6 ton capacity mine car)

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

I saw in in parts, not all at once

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Rosie Isaac

Marked by a series of roofs and coverings

I can only see a small sliver of sky. twice reflected

with my head propped on my pillow in bed.

With my head propped on my pillow in bed

marked by a series of roofs and coverings

I can see only a small sliver –– of sky twice reflected.


I can only see a small sliver of sky

twice reflected, marked by a series of roofs and coverings
with my head propped on my
pillow

in bed.


The sliver my only visual indication of the day

has turned from blue to white to

blue over the last few minutes.

In the language of the weather report: it is partly cloudy.

In the language of the weather report: it is partly cloudy

my only visual indication of the day

–– the sliver ––

has turned from blue to white to blue over the last few
minutes.


Report

the only visual indication of the weather

it is partly cloudy in the language of the sliver ––

my day has turned from blue to white to

blue over the last few minutes.


The volume of light outside my window aside from the sliver

is yellowed

aged by the roofs and coverings and reflections.


Aged by roofs and the coverings

And yellowed reflections aside,

is the sliver the volume of light from outside my window?


In the language of the

blowflies, in the language of

the rat, in the language of the spider, listen

for a story that is bigger than light, it’s cold and so it’s hard

to imagine heat.


The glass is dirty

and appears at least as old as the light
looking out windows appears old too.


Looking out windows appears old, the glass is dirty and appears too

at least as old as the light.


The dirty

glass appears at least as light as looking out the windows appears
old

and is old too.


And as dirty looking appears too appears as glass

at least the windows


the light is out, old, old.

The title of this poem comes from a phrase in The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel by Jamaica Kincaid.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Evergreen

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Abigail Fisher

Elvis and his dead twin, all grown
up and etched like a tattoo sleeve in silver
on black galaxy granite bear a striking resemblance
to the holographically rendered
aryan Jesus in my grandmother’s hallway –
another devotional grotesque proudly brought to you
like a dream within
a dream that’s been decoded
by the Elvis Presley Fan Club of Victoria
with special thanks to Giannerelli & Sons
who dug up the granite in Thomastown
somewhere along the creek
suppliers of granite spaceships, newer graves
mostly Italian, that line the narrowed paths
like a parade

If the monument had a twin
it wouldn’t be Graceland
probably the memorial in Kraków
Elvis’ head suspended in resin and his hair stained
shoe polish black by a concerned citizen
of the night

No heads here, just the profane double
twin birds of paradise and an empty white vase
several bunches of silk and plastic flowers, mostly roses
scattered with milky beads of plastic dew
or rubbery white lilies, a coral pink lei
and an asymmetrically stapled
screenshot of Elvis’ first on-screen kiss
Dolores Hart is a nun now
not only alive but actually chanting in Latin
eight times a day
here she’s only a pretty ear and a slice
of chin, the shape of clean blonde swept out of frame
polka dot grid of white tissue body pressed
to coarser material, Elvis

Elvis kissing Dolores forever and
not kissing Dolores at all
kissing to the side of Dolores or kissing
the audience
of which Dolores is no longer a member
fringe falling in sharp rays
silhouetted century plant on this
grey Carlton afternoon

LOVING THOUGHTS
ON THIS YOUR 86TH
BIRTHDAY

KEEP HEAVEN ROCKIN!

XOXOX
XO
X

Dolores laughs
the limit for a screen kiss back in 1957
was something like fifteen seconds
and this one……. dwells forever
in the evergreens or somewhere grainier
polka dotted paper flecked
the exact texture of galaxy black granite
eternal and finite, endlessly reproducible and
completely concrete
someone’s staples rusting and white paper frame
warping Elvis’ cheeks or
maybe Dolores is right and time
is the illusion
padding out the space between
wide-legged and falling on tip toes, crooning with our eyes closed
or silently screaming depending on the angle
someone else’s battle hymn
sheltered from the elements between two thick sheets
of clear plastic

In the grotto
two bibles and a clear plastic binder
protecting typewritten passages from Plato’s Cratylus
there are many kinds of desire
aren’t there, Homogenes?
but surely he would bind them with
the strongest one of all
naturally occurring sculptural chunks of Cape Schank
limestone glued with pale cement and reinforced
by rusty metal beams exposed on the roof
like a cake with not quite enough icing
or a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party
a gingko leaf and bright scraps of advertising material
placehold the tower of Babel, various psalms
and Daniel’s vision of Israel
as the four great beasts – talk about grotesque
honeycomb limestone strung by a thread
that cannot possibly support it
like a horse with legs
and countless other impossible absurdities
green chins of irish roses glowing
semi translucent through the concrete
sky light looming
pigs ears and cape province pigmy weed
inhabiting clefts along the outer wall

‘What could be more like Gladys
or a fitter background for her son, the flirtatious
male truck driver
who lounges against a rock in the sunlight
never doubting that for all his faults he is loved
and whose works are but extensions of his power
to charm
from weathered outcrop
to hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard
are ingenious but short steps in a child’s wish
to receive more attention than his stillborn twin?’

So we constructed him a tomb
in the grand manner
a masterpiece of hylomorphic Victorian
aesthetics catering to the perambulatory genteel class
who promenade around the grounds, visiting
the coastal formations

The paths a little narrower these days
and the grotto brake into pieces, residue stamped
and scattered to make room for mausoleums and the Elvis Presley
memorial shrine
lonely islands of succulent Gracelands
waiting to be featured in a coffee table book
along with fading back street milk bars, hand painted
garden gnomes and retired locksmiths
robot goldfish breeding in a verdigris fountain
or a Paul Yore installation, the kind that doesn’t get banned
and poems, I guess like Diane Fahey’s white paper flowers
blooming piñata guitar
always kind of dismissed her as a nature poet
and yet here I am running evergreens
through a plant identifying app
every variety of artificial flower doomed to return
the same error code

Note

Passages in inverted commas lifted, fairly intact, from W H Auden’s ‘In Praise of Limestone’.
Special thanks to Tim Edensor’s ‘Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality’ and Davis Jones’s ‘A Craftsman
of Rock: The Work of Charles Robinette’

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

A quiet garden-variety killer

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Samuel Wagan Watson

It creeps along the fence-line, peeping through wooden slats … nonchalant without being bombastic of how deadly it can really be … a self preserving, violet creature, the vision of a fresh haematoma; suffused capillaries blooming a flower, procuring pain…this is what an unrealised, lethal weapon with ample time does … Datura stramonium … amaranthine bouquet that can harm the family pet … Jimsonweed … with enough scopolamine in the stems to make a child tell the truth before slipping into a coma … and Indian-apple, lovache, or Moonflower … just waiting patiently for the unwary to engage in it’s psychoactive hallucinogen capacities…a quiet garden-variety killer …

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Etymology

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Bruna Gomes

after Safia Elhillo

fact: the Portuguese surname oliveira translates to olive tree
fact: the olive tree is the most praised tree in Greece

if a Portuguese surname upholds a Greek symbol
will the Portuguese man

know his heart as a leaf of peace and offer it to the world
or
become a stranger to the foreign branch lodged in his chest

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

This Light

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Timmah Ball

My lover found an internet portal to another world because there was nowhere else to go. It was deceptively called This Light and shared via a Google Drive containing 36 folders, which featured multiple subfolders hosting an assortment of films, albums, sound recordings and miscellaneous/unclassifiable video footage. It was like an absurdist streaming platform for the emotionally hollow and conversationally bereft. Selecting content threw you into the fissures of another person’s imagination where our unfulfilled desires were satisfied through their viewing choices, which ranged from social justice documentaries to peculiar clips that were as erotic as they were mundane.

We needed it because there was less and less to say, no one else to see and nowhere else to go within our 5k radius. But This Light was proof that everything still existed while delivering vicarious pleasure through the period of relentless isolation. It deepened our love by tethering us to something beyond the privilege of our state sanctioned intimate partner status. In the new geography of relationships we were safe but watched platonic partners severed apart, understanding their loss because we experienced it too. Our friends became a mirage almost in reach beyond our 5k bubbles.

At first our viewing choices were predictable Michael Haneke, David Cronenberg, Spike Lee, Catherine Breillat, Faith Akin, etc before we found ourselves within folders like Palestine Censored. It was startling to see it there amongst the streams of content, which felt like a cinephile fantasy that elevated the kitsch and the weird into ‘museum’ quality viewing. The stories it contained demanded our attention and action but it was equally odd to see it curated amongst a wide-ranging spectrum, which felt as frivolous as it was transformative and addicting. The films were selected by Kaleem Hawa and documented the land theft Palestinians experienced through the censorship of their films such as:

• Jenin, Jenin (2002), which an Israeli court recently banned and is streaming on Vimeo in solidarity via the Palestine Film Institute;
• The Lobby (2017) and The Lobby – USA (2018), in which Al Jazeera goes undercover among various pro-Israel lobby groups, was not screened in the U.S. due to pushback from Zionist organizations;
• Radiance of Resistance (2016), a documentary about Ahed Tamimi was banned in Singapore;
• The Occupation of the American Mind (2016), a documentary narrated by Roger Waters on Israel’s public relations war in the United States, which experienced many attempts to censor it;
• Cyber Palestine (1999), a short film by Elia Suleiman, a Palestinian director who has been the subject of censors for many of his films

However unlikely it’s presence was it was still an archive of western settler atrocities against Palestinians, which reinforced the implicit and explicit ways that evidence, truth telling and histories disappear within the bureaucracy. It was a reminder that community led action and documentation was needed. It was the only thing we had. So I started to screen shot work emails collecting information for a future archive that I wasn’t sure what to do with but would later send to friends. It confirmed what we already knew about a government that fabricated narratives like ‘keeping social housing residents safe means locking them in.’

Overtime I ambled through the most obscure folders where the absence of linear structure or obvious themes created an absorbing lyricism, that I needed as my own connection to ‘reality’ slipped from view. In The Artist in Society a collection of short clips were taken from feature films and popular TV shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy depicting a range of scenes that occurred in art galleries. The clips were interspersed with random interviews with Andy Warhol and a one-minute clip of Tracey Emin on Channel 4 asking the interviewer “are really real people from England watching this program right now?” with a cigarette in her hand.

My favourite gallery clip was of Eddie Murphy in Beverley Hills Cop.

Eventually we moved even further into the depths of sub-folders buried within sub-folders hidden beneath the art house films, news footage and social justice documentaries to find a section titled The Dershowitz Files dedicated to Alan Dershowitz. A lawyer who represented insidious figures such as Donald Trump, O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, and Claus von Bülow. If it intended to develop a nuanced analysis of the socio-political events that these criminals represented it was weak, leaning uncomfortably close to the ‘right to freedom’ argument raised by those who fear that call out culture impedes their creativity. It seemed to assume that all culture is valid even if created by monsters. We left the portal quickly concerned that it had ever been made.

This Light’s promise started to diminish and I wondered who had collected the wildly discordant selection of documentaries, significant feature films, video art, random home made clips and interviews with preeminent thinkers and artists. A small curatorial statement was the only clue:

This Light is a project that emerged out of a desire to make private viewing habits public, as common space continued to dissolve into private property, and our attention was pulled towards the monetized distraction of streaming content in solitude. It was also a response to the surprising lack of screening venues—and even regular screening series—in Los Angeles committed to expanding the definition of moving images as an art form. For two years I tried to summon the financial support necessary to run the project out of a decorated shed in a backyard; while at the same time taking opportunities to present the project nomadically, including a full-on prototype at the Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart. This Light was on hiatus during 2019, but the pandemic has propelled this current online expression of the project.

Thanks,
Norm

There were links to a website and Instagram that were sparse and ambiguous. I had entered Norm’s imagination not knowing who they were when there was nowhere else to go. An email address at the bottom of the website was the only possibility of finding more. With nothing to do and no one else to see I emailed.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

an island is an archive

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Kiki Amberber

island as a ghost

the island spreads its long syrupy fingers to its edges
dips tips into its own murky waters
echoing with murmurs and
the calloused rhythm it beats out
syncopated and heavy
with bones or words unsaid
bodies of water full /
of bodies
the island anxiously reaffirms itself
the island is not guilt-free
the island contains multitudes
the island is ambivalent and rearticulates itself
the island might gesture to what we leave behind
the island carries the humming of kin
in all their thick knowledge
that weight could break a cop’s back
the island is full of violence
the island is a shadowy border outlined until real
the island is an exercise in white fear
the island is an exercise in black infinity
ghosts on the island are promised futures circling,
haunting

ghost as an essay

ghost whispers in the margins and reveals infinity
scrawled notes languidly travel to a tangential conclusion
each citation is a ghost speaking in tongues
ghost carries language that tastes like metal
ghost converts callouses into question marks
where a line in the margins is a whisper laugh
humming towards new bodies
humming towards a circle
ghost is a text unsure about where it’s going,
knows where it’s from
a haunting is just a studied pause
lapping against water full of ghosts
an essay is a ghost dancing to the gaps and silences
syncopated melody tapped out on bones
or hands holding hands
or hands holding paper like the past
the past is a ghost writing itself into a slow essay
an essay is a ghost on island time

essay as water
the essay, lapping ocean words on words
rock pools through all this language
spreading like blue whispers
crevices in old buildings
the essay sprawls, an unfinished. leaking

Pages: 1 2
Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

Vessel/Vessel

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Sancintya Mohini Simpson

The wave hits
as the hand a mridangam

That timbres and vibrates
with each slap

The vessel of bodies
is not a womb

Yet carries cargo
of coolies conceived

By an empire
built from bonded blood

Like the ghatam,
fired with ash

They hiss and crack,
broken fragments

Fly and flicker,
orange red black

Sugar burnt, sweet
in harvest

But our grandmother tells
our mother of lies Sold

as promises, truths hidden
in shame

An earth soured,
smoke in our veins

We carry and hold
these vessels,

black waters, ash.

Pages: 1 2
Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

if that ghost is still here come morning

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Jazz Money

if that
ghost is
still here
come morning
brew a hot cup
go out walking
with the memory
of those you
couldn’t
heal

*

every night
comes with
new intention
but i don’t know
how to read the wind
and this salt water
has me thirsty for
a current that
knows my
return

*

sister
i’ve been
trying to listen
to this story but
every word
comes out
backwards
and every shadow
meets in long dark
where self goes
disappearing

*

go
careful
there’s rules
for whistling night
and stronger ones
that can’t be taught
if you didn’t
grow small
under the eyes
of moonlit knowings
there’s places
i didn’t
go in
time

*

this city
thudded
over site sacred
curls with ghost
watch how
certain places
bubble with
horror or
yearning

*

i’m looking
at these maps
gazing from below
i’m walking with
those ghosts
upon grid
over
drain
sister
we’re marvelling
at shadows writ
upon those dreams
by ghosts
who walk
here
still

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

family name

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Stacey Teague

1.

find the legitimate.
part of the skin.
claim it or.
don’t claim it my.
bad exchange.
my pale belonging the.
way the word.
identity makes you.
spit.
what’s in there.
the visible
thing curled.
in the mouth.
exact like biting.
the blood.
speaks the quantum.
splits.
my favourite.
colour is white.
-passing.


2.

my cousins and I don’t.
have any.
brothers we don’t know.
about men don’t.
want to.
we connect at the.
colour of bruises.
open our drinks view.
pain as an ash-like.
diminishing.
we can imagine.
a sudden deep optimism.
in the face of utter.
calamity.
I will devote myself.
to its water.
develop a silken.
empathy.
harm is better.
dismantled.


3.

make me a weaver.
I will wait.
to stop bleeding.
to harvest.
the flax in my.
backyard cut.
away from the.
heart at an.
angle scrape off.
the skin with a.
shell my ancestors.
also waited.


4.

to be on an earth.
that turns is to.
exist around crisis.
like looking into.
a non-human eye.
my visions are alive.
with me like an.
empress I.
untouch the insides.
I make something.
fit that does.
not want to.

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged

salt sore

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Hasib Hourani

the sunlight starts without me
latecomer to the morning sleeping
through alarms chasing
yellow glow well after it has turned
orange
turned blue turned
black

tea steeping into its strongest self
i am trying to change the way i look
in the mirror
my face is squaring
off with my body a race to an end
i didn’t see where it started

i have not been taking photos
of my changing face
because the screen won’t do it justice

angels
show up at my doorstep
they tell me i need to leave

a pilgrimage to the seaside
to find the skyline
watch the light sink
into water
watch the water
start at my feet
the horizon is a false finish

i have not been taking photos
of my changing face
but my camera roll is a catalogue
of melting skies
that looked better in person

skies melting white phosphorous
one bang and two angels
telling me to leave

my dad opens a new jar of jam
and mixes it with a butter knife
so that all trace of stillness
is disappeared
one bang and expansion forever
one bang to start the race

telling me i need to leave
a pilgrimage to the seaside

little windows in the tram
walls filled with sand
otherwise it won’t know
how to stop
once it picks up speed
one bang to start a race

one bang to start
a race with no photos
because i’m too tired in the morning
i forget during the day and
i don’t like the light of the evening
on me
the heaviest part of the body is the chest

i don’t see where it starts
but i know where it will end

draining from where
the weight is stored
little windows in the tram
walls that spill
a secret: this vessel
is not actually that heavy
you can take it anywhere

one race track ballasted by salt and sand

sluggish sun seeping thick into concrete
tannin on a shoreline
everything exploded expansion
forever getting bigger
long shadows like aftertaste

my dad makes jam on toast
and digs right to the bottom of the glass
scooping from its seabed

the sunlight starts without me
because my chest
spends eight hours settling and
i don’t have it in me to pick it back up

i’m glad there’s ballast on the train tracks
spare sets of arms for the sleepers
because the carriages are so heavy

i have not been taking photos
i can’t look back
at beginnings

i wipe my camera lens with my shirt
every time i go to take a picture
because if something can’t be still
at least it will be crisp
burning from melting sky
one bang two angels
i know where it will end
but i’m not allowed to see it
yet

a pilgrimage to the seaside
one bang and expansion forever

i hear the train boom and run
towards the railing
i like when the road shuts
rest my chin on the metal
stand at a false finish

a tower of salt sore
in the landscape
greedy to see how it ends

my eyesight has not gotten better
or worse in six years but i can’t
stop buying new glasses

i am trying to change the way i look
back at the melting sky
without becoming a tower of salt
sugar pink

clouds on my phone screen
jam spread sloppy

i wake up still in deep blue
and watch the corners of my bedroom
take shape a proxy sunrise
like walking the street
on a full moon
and saying it’s sunny out

the sunlight starts without me
and it only stops
for the new moon

my dad puts the jam back in the fridge

the heaviest part of the body is the chest

i can’t think back to where it started but i know
where i want it to end expansion
forever getting bigger becoming something else

twenty per-cent of the body is the chest

yesterday i ran the train tracks fence
closing in ringing to mark the end
of something ringing to mark
a last chance sun setting
metal snapping neck straight
i did not look back

one bang and the shatter
of glass turning into sand

Posted in 103: AMBLE | Tagged