Jean Ringland

My Father's Hat

A faded photo falls from the album,
my father, face shaded, in his felt hat,
an akubra perhaps……

In infant years, I don't remember the hat
only my father's soft brown hair
glistening with Brylcreem, or flopping
in his eyes as he played cricket with the boys
and I was banished to keep score.
Later he would rest on the back step,
cigarette in stained fingers, thumb
resting on his cheek, as smoke drifted.
Sometimes he strummed on the mandolin
while my mother sang softly in the kitchen.

He walked across the paddocks bare-headed
to bring us home from school.
I remember my dad well, the man
who read me Rhymes of the Red Cross Man.
He wore his hat only on important occasions;
trips to cheer on the local football team,
a drive to town to thrill to 'Rin-Tin-Tin'
visits to the doctor for broken limbs or belly aches.
all this before a carefree country life became our past.

Drought, depression, 'susso', 'laid off,'
new words we learned, as hand-me-downs
were grudgingly accepted and waste became a sin.
With passing years and steady work
a new hat, to be worn daily with suit and tie,
became a fixture on the hall stand;
along with carpets to cover bare boards,
lounge chairs, beach holidays
and school fees paid on time.

We children learned to understand hat messages;
a jaunty angle brought lollies in the pockets
and laughter at the table, brow lower - serious times,
a need for long discussions before homework and bed.
Lower still – late home, the stumble in the hall
and my mother, frozen faced, serving the meal
in silence, while little ones, bewildered,
dared not drop a spoon or spill their milk.

Long after the funeral, when Mum and the house had shrunk,
his hat remained, hanging by the well-worn gabardine,
a garment we grabbed on bleak days for walks
through Eastern Park or a quick dash to the shops.
It was the wild and beautiful granddaughter
who finally claimed the battered hat.
She wore it at a jaunty angle,
packed her swag and left to travel North.

Max Ryan

Evening Storm

The storm has found us now.
Black limbs of banksia
splay across our tent,
flung up on lightning's lash.

You and I are here inside,
a candle flame between us.
Listen, out on the ridge
the wail of she–oaks
thrums the wind's long strings.

On the beach below, the ocean
folds an octave down
in caverns of rolling thunder.

A candle flame, cool static
of your skin, your face,
your flickering hair.

The deep chord of our limbs,
the rain, the sway of the tide.
The one cry between us
and your breath breaks into mine.

Max Ryan

Five Beggars

Light from a street lamp glances
past the curtain to a blistered wall
of my hotel room. A man's voice
trumpets out of an alleyway:
Ram, Ram, Ram.
His cry fades as I fall
into a dream of five blind beggars.

The crowd parts as they wind through city back streets,
hurling their voices higher and higher, swinging their heads
from side to side. I'm there, caught in the rhythms
that thrash their bodies. I know their song:
this world is not real, this world is not my home.
I stare into their faces, sing out their words till I spin
on glazed white moons of their eyes.

Suddenly, I have hold of the last beggar. Voices race
over the clash of bells. My feet move faster. I try
but can't let go. My voice unravels from their chorus
into a long shrill cry.

I wake before dawn, hold the creaky railing
down to the dim-lit street. Outside a tea shop, a man
stoops to part a hessian curtain. A dog barks
as I pass a huddle of blanket bodies.
A hiss of cymbals, voices grow louder.
Five blind beggars sway out of the night,
coming straight towards me.

Neera Scott

Praise [extract]

She is dark, small, curled to reveal her back like a stone.
She makes no movement save her breathing,
which sends a ripple along her spine.
Her hair is full of spiders. Her skin, cool.
She is my poison, my nightflower.
I drink her from an hourglass. She is brandy; and cream.
She haunts me like mirrors. She says yes, yes.
I want her like sunrise.
I bring her the veins of poppies.
I light fires, burning promises to ash. I take the ashes to wipe her brow.
I reach out and touch her hair.

The spiders dance up my arm, seeking the pith of my skull.
Vision is eight-limbed. I am released.
I am dark, small, my back curls like a stone. I sink to the bed of the pool.
A viscous gravity in my veins.
Water. The song of spiders. Everything is black.

Neera Scott

Feedback

Darkness rolls in, thickening
shadows,

marshalling them
into whole armies. They line up,
faceless.

You sit in your chair by the fire.
Outside
the sound of a car.

Across the road, each wave
grinds the shore to foam.

If memory is a place, it is this:
the sound of ocean

bucking your sea-shell
dreams.
You press your ear to it,
always amazed
by that perfect reproduction

never imagining it to be
a trick
of acoustics.

MELISSA LUCASHENKO

Remembering Blackboys

It was all Wilfred Owen at school.
I suppose there is some corner of a foreign field
that is yet Europe distilled.
Not empire, not named as such, no.

The war film at Ballina Fair
Shows me Tom Hanks silent at white crosses.
And books of Australian poems,
And Australian cemeteries,
Crosses there, and
Jesus, Angels.
This is how the white people die.

You might not know blackboys, ay.
It's a plant, a bush tree, with a bloody
Big spear standing up in the middle.
God having a go a Freud, maybe.
You can eat that inside part.
It's food, that white part, inside
The grasstree, inside that skirt of needleleaf
And coarse blackbrown stubble.
Only trouble is, it kills it, the eating.
And blackboys take about five hundred years to grow.
Maybe longer.
They're around everywhere in the bush at Uni,
Big one, little, all sizes.
Been there five hundred years,
Before you, before me, before the whites.
See the Goories are mostly shot out from her.
Not all, but mostly,
And there's plenty blackboys growin up tall around here now

Call them crosses

JANICE BOSTOK

Freewheeling - Haiku Sequence

unable to see
my neighbour's house
I sense her light

surface of the pond rises to meet each drop of rain

stationary bus
talking we visit places
within each other

the tree felled days after birds circle the emptiness

pregnant again...
the fluttering of moths
against the window

in flight black cockatoos shriek circles with him

seabirds
freefalling
sky
to
fish

pink nose of the sugar glider bristled by our scent

along the cattle track
the comfortable
rubbing tree

Lel Sebastian

He is opposite me with his legs on the table his
thick dry hands holding the big orange book reading
sometimes naked sometimes mad now the scholar now
the fool thus they appear on earth the free men, and
I see him running a wide curve on sand into sea then
I see my neighbour's tight head in front of me his
question had come quiet and quick he's alright? and me
nodding yes and saying it but wonder (as my lover turns
the pages his serious lips) if he meant something else.
Ha! What a cheek he fucks you well yes he fucks me
well I am amused in a frightened sought of way I am
easy prey for this man of shit and death for this man
we've made lives he's a dealer aterrorest a voyeur he
hides in the bushes we laugh n bed and in the kitchen
we enjoy the updates. He's building a helicopter he's
going to Cuba he is a photographer shot Dylan and
the Dalai Lama. Oustide we giggle like huddling kids
heehee heehee my man and I yur renaissance beauty
your lunar profile your eyes kind and shocked and snake-
like deep and dirty in me you do it well, you do it well.

LAURA JAN SHORE

Passion

Out of the doldrums
of overheated rooms,
passion startles me.

A vixen , ruddy as the dawn sky,
is chased by her long-tailed mate,
over the crust of snow,
their arcs around the barn
visible from my bedroom.

On rump and hind legs,
the foxes slide
across the frozen length of pond,
cartoon-style.
Without a backward glance, she scrambles
up the bank, wends her way
through dry cattail tips
scattering crows before her.

He leaps,
projectile in a spray of snow,
sprints like a dancer
in stylised pursuit.
Around house and barn, unwearying, they race
back to pond
to skim the ice again and again
on their bright fur.

All of my morning woes
fly out
into this wild love at daybreak,
into this fiery joy
streaking across white fields.