States of Poetry Series Two
walk hard –
grains of weather glitter like the night has sunk,
streaks of thin stars, light rain sharpening the scrub;
we are small, so small in the draining sky
as squalls stroke searching for our skin.
sweat-slumped on tussocks, raw pools
smoking in the famished sun.
dragging mud across my knees,
I whip my skin with shards.
words are b ...
While we circled space,
the paint-stained grass
and the dogs in-and-out
huffing their thoughts, he’d told us
how they tried to gill our work and rest
in languid backyard bays. The bolts
in rock, firm in life and death, were now
exempt from clasping hooks to bring
the bait aboard, protected
like the tiger, like the quolls;
like rocks, we ...
Ben Walter’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in Australian journals, including Meanjin, Island, Southerly, and The Lifted Brow. His début novel manuscript was the winner of the people’s choice category in the 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes. He won the 2016 John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award ...
... (read more)Claude Monet, 1903–04
When in early morning
London fog throws its veil
of thick organdie over the Thames
dawn espouses dusk.
Confetti is spread over the town
and sequins of frosted dew glitter on the ground.
Victoria Tower, Big Ben and Central Tower
stand like gothic ghosts.
Fog
makes London beautiful
gives breadth to buil ...
The fly lands on the schoolboy's wooden desk.
The boy spots four dark strokes on the fly's thorax
and a body slightly downy.
Li ...
Claude Monet, 1908
Monsieur Monet has a new lover.
She calls at two every afternoon
and invites him to stay a few hours.
Worshipped by Whistler, Boudin and Signac
Santa Maria della Salute is not like the others.
From the steps of the Palazzo Barbaro
wrapped in a bestowed fur coat
he impregnates the domes of his mistress
with a nacreou ...
Claude Monet Circa 1865–70
It is my life. I must recognise
the future is called the past.
I turn around to contemplate my youth.
My destiny resembles you
and your shadow follows my body.
You are walking in the garden of my eyes.
I owe you everything.
I am no more than your dust
a fine particle of your step.
This dark intim ...
Christiane Conésa-Bostock was born in Lyon, France and has lived in Hobart since the 1970s. Christiane, along with The Grove Road Poets (Karen Knight, Liz Mc Quilkin, Liz Winfield, and Megan Schaffner), won First Prize in the Fellowship of Australian Writers competition in 2010 with their book Of Things being ...
'After, there are the birds' by Gina Mercer | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
He sends me photos
of the singular crimson rosella
who observes him through the kitchen window
as he cooks dinner for one.
He sends me boxes of her best clothes:
designer jackets, silk shirts, tailored trousers.
Asks me to share them among family
even though she was the size of a wren
and we’re all currawongs.
He sends me photo after poignant ...
Forget
all you know about Canute,
the king who believed the waves under his dominion,
he could stop the tides by command.
Remember
to bet all you have
on the dead cert
that global warming is real
& ...