Issue 2
August 2024
BRIAN ADAMS
Requiem for a Planet
Between Capricorn and Cancer only cockroaches survive.
Their carapaces charred and cracked
As they scuttle and scavenge amongst the scorched skeletons
Seeking remnants of flesh and skin on the bleached bones.
All other life has fled meridionally to the North or the South.
Tropical refugees seeking temperate, even polar climes.
Genesis a forgotten myth; Exodus a living reality.
The lust for sustenance and lebensraum inexorable.
But the paths of this swarming humanity are blocked.
Nations defending their viability, their right to life.
Wars abound but without conquest. Anarchy de rigeur.
Fires, floods, famine and pestilence prevail.
The Four Horsemen have arrived.
White, Red, Black and Pale.
The Seven Seals have been broken.
Armageddon. Apocalypse now. Amen.
Brian (aka Aramis) was born in 1944. As a retired engineer he now tries to write prose less technical: sometimes poetry of a social commentary nature.
GRAHAM WOOD
Ontological Ouch!
He’s reading a slim tome called Enterprise Ontology,
this bloke on the morning train beside me
deep in a chapter on ‘The Organisation Theorem’,
one mid-page flaunting, in separate coloured segments,
an isosceles pyramid annotated with corporation-speak.
It might keep him awake past Chatswood, that diagram -
but only if he places the open book between us on the seat,
imagines the pyramid standing upright from the page,
and plonks his backside down upon
its enterprising business end.
The Next Island
Here by this blue island pool,
Bali : domesticated waterfalls
and clatter of the world
at play. Beneath it all
untamed, the quiet roar
of ocean on reef.
Under nodding triangles
blue prahus skim
beyond wavebreak.
The sun’s heat warms
my already sunburnt leg.
This island has meant
ten days of time-drift,
respite from oceans of work
with more to chart and sail.
To the east,
across the deepest strait in the world,
lies Lombok, the next island.
Graham has lived in Sydney for most of his life, after half a childhood in country New South Wales. 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 over 2021-2022 (Picking Up the Sun; Frivolous; Australian Minuscule; Rattling Cutlery and Affinities).
HELEN BERSTEN
A Cracker of a night
Cold in the park
Frosty breaths against a dark starry sky
Catherine Wheels spitting on the posts
and a giant bonfire flinging sparks into the heavens.
All of us gathered, wide-eyed
coats and hats and gloves
and our shoeboxes brimming with precious crackers,
poor Ernie’s went up altogether once,
but we lit ours one by one,
or braver kids in groups together,
and the rockets shot up to the stars
long before Sputnik or Challenger.
The boys lit bungers and jumping jacks
that chased us screaming girls down the street.
For my kids we built a smaller fire
Jacket potatoes in the ashes
eaten in foil with gloved hands
A few crackers and the neighbours
(gone now, but not forgotten).
It was always dry in May
Just before my birthday
We never thought of Queen Vic
whose birthday it actually was
on Cracker Night.
The music of being
Speak with your eyes
and listen with your heart;
wander in your mind
and watch the world re-start
Juggle with your feet
and reason with your tongue;
find the music in your body
and the new world has begun.
Silence is the language
that speaks to heal the soul;
touch – the beating rhythm
that wraps around the whole;
taste - the breath that nurtures
and sight the brightest gift –
we revel in the beauty
of the world where we exist.
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.
CHRIS BRADSHAW
Gleaning
When shades of night retreat in early light
and magpie warbles stir the waking corners
of eucalypt stand and rockface gully,
it is then that the gleaning begins.
In mossy hollows I garner fragrant gum leaves
herded by a moody squall
and huddled together for solace.
By dappled clearings I harvest crystal dewdrops
dowsing swathes of emerald grass
where amber wallabies graze.
Along a rambling creek I gather quartz pebbles
strewn like fallen moon shards
beneath a mirrored sky.
The minuscule things that lie quietly on the edges,
unnoticed, unremarked,
these are the things that sustain me.
Curled in reverent fingers, cocooned in a fraying sleeve,
coaxed into pockets and folded into memory,
their stillness becomes my own.
I forage through fields with flutters of swallowtails,
gathering wool
and weaving the yarn
into cloud forests of tranquillity.
And I lay myself down in the lush silence
with only the murmur of wind and water,
gleaning so much more
than the leavings of the reapers.
Patterns
i) Determined to prove my theory,
I kept feeding the results of chaos
back into the equation of my life,
and waited to be justified.
But under my incredulous eye,
detailed patterns began to evolve,
shapes proliferating
in endless complexity.
ii) I saw the symmetry of a crystal gem
echoed within a snowflake;
the curve of a curling wave
duplicated in a spiral shell.
I held a leaf in my hand,
and the delicate dendrite strands
extrapolated effortlessly
from the venous vessels in my arm.
iii)The more disorder was predicted,
the more the universe
perpetuated its own likeness.
Fibonacci sequence in floral whorls
like coiling DNA helix.
Waterways fanning across a delta,
a carpet of Mandelbrot fractals
replicated in a lightning bolt.
iv) Random ripples and flocks
in windblown desert sands
mirrored in an intricate maze
of cumulonimbus and altostratus.
Thinkers and dreamers
through untold ages
vindicated with the advent
of space-age technology.
v) Before Ancient Greek geometry
discovered divine proportion
in boundless organic forms,
and found the golden ratio
in its infinite iterations,
art has imitated life
in stone and on papyrus,
and man has contemplated the stars.
vi) When my transit draws near,
place me in Agrippa’s pentagram
and propel me into space,
that I may see our blue planet
tracing its electron orbit
around our nuclear sun:
a microcosmic atom
inside a galactic molecule.
Chris Bradshaw has lived most of her life in Sydney and has worked in journalism, publications and education policy. Her published works include a book of her early poetry, a research work on her family’s post-World War 2 immigration to Australia, several social history programs broadcast on 2SER-FM, and ongoing publication of poems, short stories and children’s stories in digital and print media. Poetry was, and remains, her first love.
HENRI METCALFE
The axis of love
If you drew a graph of their relationship
Where their lines met and departed
It wouldn’t take much scholarship
To guess at how this all started
It could just be coincidence
Or maybe accidental
But if you’re watching what the lines reveal
We could get sentimental
Long ago they’d met and loved
Then their lines had veered away
They both married someone else
And the graph went into disarray
Now she sits across the table in a whiter shade of pale
She knows he wants to kiss her but she’s not sure she should stay
She only knows he hurt her once and for that he has to pay
So for a parting shot she fires at him -a deadly “by the way”
With a perfect eyebrow raised she asks
Does the name Trixie mean anything to you
He lights a second cigarette
Deeply ponders
But no, he hasn’t got a clue
She helps his recollection with a memory prompt or two
Something about an ape and handcuffs and a game of peekaboo
His line begins to circle in a momentary gyral
But the satisfaction on her face plunges it downwards in a spiral
While her line makes jagged corners and looks like a poison viral
And the graph goes off the graph into a use-by-date expiral
But the ways of love are many
And who can understand
Maybe it’s the weather
Or maybe its their glands
But when she leans towards him and he reaches for her hand
Their graph dances like curlicue and becomes an ampersand
Carol, Elvis and me
We’re at the front door
Of the new neighbour’s house
Holding wine
The door swings open
We’re all smiles
Welcome to the neighbourhood
All eyes are on the dad
There are 3 kids standing next to him
I don’t drink, says he
His unpleasantness is so embarrassing
He grabs the bottle
Then swiftly slams shut the door
Returning to our house
In the middle of the suburban hell
It’s my parents’ dream come true
And boring beyond endurance
But a glimmer of hope
There’s a girl my age
And 2 younger boys who cower
Under the tower of the dad’s anger
When Carol and I meet
We are mutually disappointed
But become friends
Walking home from the bus stop
Carol’s bedroom
Is circa Sandra Dee
Pink fluff and soft toys
She’s living the 50’s dream
And has an American accent
Above Carol’s bed
Is a life size poster
Of Elvis Presly
We’re both lying on her bed
And Elvis is lying on top of us
Carol suddenly says
He’s got good teeth
You have to give him that
But I can only see his lips
Carol is jiggling on the bed
I look at her teeth
They are little, sharp and pointy
She’s called the cat at school
A loud scream breaks the night
Dad’s got out the razor strop
I can’t hear the mum
She’s nearly as big as him
So I’m not too worried
Many nights are spent
Just Carol, Elvis and me
Lying on her bed
Talking about the boys we fancy
Carol wants to nab one
Roy lives up the street
He is small, young and immature
But Carol is determined
Next summer our gang spends in Rich Roy’s pool
And a year later they’re engaged
Carol rocks the biggest diamond
Henri Metcalfe is a retired English teacher who lives, works and studies in the Cammereygal region of Sydney. Her interests include writing, everything Shakespeare, studying mysticism, and meeting friends for coffee.
SARNIE HAY
Uncork the Wine
Surrender recalcitrant cork and let
the captured grape draw from the
darkened cellar, light and life again
Graceful stripes gather down the sides
of my swirling glass and my nose starts
to morcellate the heady new aromas
Sweet cardamon and bitter chocolate
once aged in oak hogsheads
along the shores of the Canal Du Midi
The first sip lingers, silky-long
wrapped in warm, drowsy days—
a barge floating past sunflower fields
Vineyards dripping with purple grapes
at every twist and turn. The chatter of
the breeze rippling through the plane trees
Lochs and fortified hilltop villages
of mouth filling appellations
waning from my tongue
But commingled on my pallet
with the sweet aftertaste
of uncorked memories
Sarnie’s poems have appeared in ‘The Intimacy of Strangers’, ‘Poetry Matters’ and Starbeck Orion. In 2023 she released her first book of poems called “Rusty Nails and Goddesses”. Her poems have been described as ‘full bodied and smooth’—the way she likes her whisky. Currently, she coordinates the North Shore Poetry Collective.
OORMILA PRAHLAD
Shared Walk
Here, where the compass forgets its north,
I am lost again. In the agitation of dials,
time tailspins, coming to rest on the sign
that says Shared Walk. The car crawls
on rainy asphalt. Restless spirits watch
from the trees, unseen, but ever-present.
Who fears the sight of the rivulets
in the headstones, traced by the hands
of the sleeping? I have been to this end-path
twice before. Once I saw the paling outline
of a young child, cloaked in a clutch
of feathers, lingering, frightened to fly.
I waited around till it found the peace
to finally float away—to seek a place
among the brooch of starlings
pinned on the silk of night.
Road trip
In an unusual moment, the agnostic in me
communes with God—
softer, than the breeze
in the cider gums, praying for grace
to loosen the bristle-wire of terror
tightening around my feet.
Wheels skirt the trail—the day’s last rays
pulsing like a lantern fly, and the city fades—
neon, distant. A Dreamtime sky flowers,
its primordial stars illuminating the way.
On sun-worn leather, everything of value
to me in this lifetime, breathes, in orbs.
The littlest calls out in fairy-timbre—
Are we there yet?
The paperbarks snatch and hoist his voice
like a coda in the mist,
transcribing his wanderlust
over the din of my thudding heart
and the thundering roll of rubber.
(Shared Walk, and Road trip were first published in Issue 2 of The Starbeck Orion UK in May 2024.)
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple times for the Best of the Net. She is the author of three digital micro chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project US. Her debut collection, Patchwork Fugue, was published by Atomic Bohemian Press UK (February 2024), and her chapbook A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys won The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK’s Little Black Book Competition (May 2024). She lives and works in Sydney on traditional Gammeragal land. Find her on X @oormilaprahlad