States of Poetry
a beetle enamoured with my lamp : a harbinger
of spring : as if the tree blossoming
on the footpath opposite was not enough :
or the budding persimmon : or the bottlebrush flowers
i didn't notice until today : there's evidence of spring :
in abundance : the enduring dusk : that's holding
still : days that are shifting south : subtly :
to an alternate frame of ...
A day in parallax – duco-blue –
a crop of borrowed gold,
in focus, replete –
fibrous stems of light, agitated,
and, over them, the bales
of cloud dispersing.
The motor ticking
long after it is silenced.
And the impulse it honours: this.
Thom Sullivan
after Paul Muldoon's 'Why Brownlee Left'
Where Brownlee went, and why he went,
is no mystery – Brady's bar.
And if a man should have fixed intent
it was him; two shots of whiskey,
one of Bushmills, one of Redbreast,
a cheer and a slab for the house.
He was then seen going out to piss
in the March morning, sure and surly.
I wonder what happens
in Seb's kitchen, I see
him round the corner
into the room, sun shining, cat
ready for food, a grin
that is mixed of resignation
& amusement eyes alight
for the opportunity
each day brings. I always
liked the way he understood
things – things I've
never understood –
as an open secret, knowledge
with w ...
States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | 'Anniversary' by Barbara Temperton
We've been in mourning just over a year,
or just under, depending on the date we're marking.
Not always celebrations, anniversaries
have a way of keeping their appointments:
they're ticked off at the level of the body
and brain, our biochemical wakes.
I've felt strange all week, sick and sleep-obsessed,
a willed agoraphobic. Show me the cave
I need to ...
States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | 'Foxes' Lair' by Barbara Temperton
Casuarina leaves disable the dog.
He halts on the track ahead, scratches,
then sits and sulks, his undercarriage
a matt of clinging tendrils.
My hands prickle with casuarina scales
so small they're almost unseen,
but my palms know they're there
and the dog does, too, his eyes accusing.
The she-oaks shouldn't have been a surprise,
but were. We came up ...
States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | 'My Mother’s Ravens’ by Barbara Temperton
They toll hours. I trace the peak and trough of raven-call
through brick veneer walls to the hospital – an hour away –
with every throaty rattle, to my Aunt, morphine
pump filtering sleep. She's comfortable, her nurses say.
Housebound with telephone, I'm waiting, listening
for whispering oxygen, for rattle-claws on tiles,
black birds stalking roofs of this cind ...
States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | ‘Ghost Nets: an elegy’ by Barbara Temperton
Evening, at the edge of the reef
a ghost net snags my fishing line.
Lead-core line is made to last and often
braided round plastic craypots tumbling
from West Coast to Madagascar
to shroud the coastline over there.
I write my dead friend's name in foam,
watch a wave rush it away.
In another's name a rose adrift
surfs an off-shore rip away
ove ...
I drive in on Daylight Saving Time
with a pale, fat moon rising
over the Moresby Ranges.
New subdivision: Ocean Heights Estate?
It looks like Sandcastle Land.
Foreshore dunes
limestone-terraced into sharp ledges:
high-priced real estate
perched at weed-wreathed ocean edge
awaiting global warming.
Blowouts hiberna ...
States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | ‘Dog Barks Heard from the Kitchen’ by J.P. Quinton
The river has always
sat in front of me,
mud between toes
shooting down grassy
hills on cardboard. My
brother dragged a sheep
behind a canoe
to the other side,
and painted a warning
on his rose canvas
when my sister drowned.
She was throwing rocks
when swallowed.
Dog barks heard from the kitchen.
Mum ran screaming up