Issue 1
August 2023
KIERAN CONDELL
Cafe murmur
coffee the currency of the age
a four-dollar strong flat-white
at the crowded al fresco café
disappointed autumn light
reaching and tepid on the skin
a last legal place to ‘light up’
in a village of council permits
green shirted council rangers
-always short brown beards-
with pens, notebooks, scour
hospitality training, first shift
the young waitress in black
vine and red blossom tattoo
coils on her upper shoulder
a healthy look like the Dutch
coffee grinds’ speckle hands
can’t balance dining plates
on her scalded arm yet smiles
all darkness away from you
coffees teetering in her hands
“just don’t spill it, don’t spill it”
taking precarious steps towards
three grey haired ladies talking
winning bridge hands in a corner
art luminates from a wall
by john a community artist
over charcoal the lacquer
he sprays to fix the palette
shines a little under a globe;
famed for his arcade mural
the coffee machine in union
ticks with heat from the grill
marking the rising temperature
in this sweltering workspace
bodies negotiate passages
weaving the six-foot kitchen
goldfish in a small aquarium
an indian guy, the proprietor
red cooking burns on hands
scars of a measure of torture
folds a chicken avocado wrap
like a stationery envelope
wishes there was more profit
in this place and seeks to find
open vistas for a listless gaze
no response from the distance
the till drawer bell tings closed
Kieran is a Sydney poet who enjoys nothing more than a strong cup of tea and a cigarette.
BRIAN ADAMS
1788 The First Fleet enters what we now know as Sydney Harbour
Born in London during WW2, Brian emigrated to Australia as a young man in 1966. He enjoyed a very rewarding career as an engineer and project director. He is married to Elizabeth with whom he enjoys travelling and good food. They just returned from a great holiday in Norway and Ireland. His interests are very broad, including just recently trying to write some poetry. He likes to exploit both sides of his brain as far as possible: what’s left of it! He admires polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci and he would have liked to have been a pupil of Leonardo.
HELEN BERSTEN
Metrophobia
In my seventh decade, I still learn new facts every day
from puzzles, quizzes and crosswords.
Today I learned that ‘metrophobia’ is the fear of poetry!
But of what? The line, the words, the meter?
How many people do you know who run in terror from a poet
carrying his bomb of verse, his suicide vest of sonnets,
his AK47 packed with rhymes?
Methinks the wordsmith doth protest too much.
Iambic pentameter at 30 paces anyone?
Helen has been writing sporadically for over 60 years – mostly poetry and short stories. She has been included in the North Shore Poetry Project anthologies. She is an avid writer of letters to newspapers and enjoys solving crosswords. Professionally, she is a trained librarian and has been a volunteer reader for Radio 2RPH for nearly 20 years. She lives in Lindfield.
KARLA WHITMORE
Australia Obscurus
I
Down there, somewhere is a place that entices
the Great South Land wrapped around the pole
to balance stretches of land way north
Terra Incognita of Ptolemy’s world view
land of fancy and mystery, possibilities
guarded by distance, fortressed by waves
a challenge for old world exploration
seeking gold and spices and routes to largesse
insatiable Spain also discovery bound
explored as far as the Torres Strait
II
Redoubtable voyagers from the Netherlands
in three-masted ships carrying piquant cargo
one, the diminutive Duyfken, encountered
barren expanse of a northern cape
not a promising landscape by all accounts
fragments added down the western coast
where ships sank, vanished, consumed by death
New Holland described these barely known shores
Australia shrouded in distance and ignorance
with elusive beings sprung from earth
III
South to latitude forty degrees the seas
turn icy, a ship like a lonely seabird
sailed north up a pristine eastern coast
a wind gust ahead of the luckless French
the second Englishman put foot ashore
on the continent on the Pacific’s rim
superseding the fabled Great South Land;
danger met and overcome on a coral reef
the Endeavour rested to sail home once more
Australia, assembled from a mythic jigsaw
Karla Whitmore writes articles in the field of decorative arts for journals and online. She enjoys writing poetry inspired by art and history as well as nature, the cosmos and reflections on life.
ERINA BOOKER
One Night Off Full
this moon
wipes its face
on slate-blue clouds
disappears completely
I search it
utterly
a glow of light
perhaps
but nothing
then a rim
appears
a sector
I see it
its seven-veiled
tease
trails of fuzzed silk
frothed to
a mantilla of lace
reveals one eye
in a crisp
upper quadrant
becomes a Cubist portrait
comprising lavish lessons of
geometricity simultaneity
and always,
the Fourth Dimension
of the dreaming omniscient
nightself…
Erina Booker is an Australian poet, based in Sydney. Her life revolves around poetry, from publishing books and contributing to journals, to recitals at public events, presentation of seminars, and judging competitions. She contributes ekphrastic poems to various galleries. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Literature and Composition), and a Postgraduate degree in Counselling. Words, and the pauses between, are her interests. Her work may be found on Amazon and Lulu Press.
GRAHAM WOOD
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
In the checkout queue, almost idly
I think of you, in the caterpillar crawl
of shopping trolleys, in this regulated pause
between the gathering and the reckoning.
I reach back wondering, imagine you
in a similar queue - masked - musing
on the order and rhythm of your life
as you enact its altered rituals.
And suddenly, in this fraught
but mundane harvesting of groceries, I hunger
for disorder again, for the newness of you,
for the temptations of undiscoveredness,
for that first fizz of just-opened love
that buoyed us on its updraft
before it all went viral.
Graham has lived in Sydney for most of his life. His poems have been published in Australian and international journals and anthologies, and on a number of poetry websites. Ginninderra Press has recently published his first full poetry collection titled Of Moments and Days, and previously published five of his poetry chapbooks (Picking Up the Sun; Frivolous; Australian Minuscule; Rattling Cutlery and Affinities).