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States of Poetry Poems

for Wolfgang and Birgit

I failed to sleep last night, I failed to have the dreams
that would take me safe from one day into the next.

I failed to be brave, afraid of the train, its snout of steel
pushing out of the dark into the station at San Pietro,

its sides towering over us blue and white and filthy with night.
It hissed, cracked open, impatie ...

This poem has not yet been written
and before it is I want to say I respect
the President of the United States,
the man himself and his office

and I respect what the people
mean when they say Democracy
though I do not know what this
might have to do with being armed

and having put these points like this
as plainly as possible
on t ...

You woke with a headache
and opened the bedroom window blind.
You bent forward as morning light came in.
It fell on your belly and breasts
and your sleep maddened hair.
I could hear the sickness in your voice
as you accepted a salad bowl to throw up in
and two pills with breakfast.

The new sun tipped itself up over distant mountains
outside the ki ...

States of Poetry 2016 - Victoria | 'Siren' by Kevin Brophy

Kevin Brophy
Monday, 22 February 2016

For Marianne J Boruch and David Dunlap

 

We walk past the ruined past
pasted to the Academy’s cloister walls,
past broken Latin stones’ fracture ...

States of Poetry 2016 - Victoria | 'Fear' by Amy Brown

Amy Brown
Monday, 22 February 2016

States of Poetry 2016 - Victoria | 'Luck' by Amy Brown

Amy Brown
Monday, 22 February 2016

States of Poetry 2016 - Victoria | 'Map' by Amy Brown

Amy Brown
Monday, 22 February 2016

When it was nearly still acceptable
to nip the shoulder of the pleasant boy
sitting cross-legged in front of you
(leaning back and pulling the royal blue

wool of his jersey with loose teeth)
I had an elastic idea, which stretched
through the next twenty-five years. Senior
primary school's kingdom of fully grown

flax bushes and adult-sized toilets,