States of Poetry Tasmania

please settle me down in
the depths of the river,
scattered ash lodged
in the silt. let metal
tailings weigh, pulp
dissolve my pages
and the sparkling view
of sewage be interred;
do not let me drift out to sea.

Ben Walter

'Weight' first appeared as part of The Red Room Company's 'Disappear ...

The old dust was left behind;
it hatched crystals,
snowflakes,
a multiverse
dining with itself
around a table.

Heart twigs beat
against the breath and
winding legs patrol
a speck of flesh;
red neurons fire
the sedge, slip below
the iris of lagoon.

Shuffle the pool,
there are diamonds;
numberless suits,
...

if we are straws slurping
at this pool, it is to slake
our own thirst; we have
claimed this land as
ten thousand flagpoles
needing no flag, but
we are gentle sceptres;
a nest dispersed and
cradling paper wings.

this silt: our home,
where all legs hurry
as their days dry up;
this rot: our mother,
tadpole to sedge. and so ...

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 ...

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 ...