Little Darling – Natalie Crick

Something very small
Lives in there still.
A black flower
Blooming in the darkness.

Holding her breath,
Waiting to be touched.
Begging,
But bleeding.

Here comes the sun,
Little Darling.
Where do the other children play?
She can hear the trees.

The loner’s black thoughts
Are ephemeral.
He curdled the smell of absence
In soured milk.

These are sinister times.
They begin and end in silence
Where the barren fields are far away,
The moon half-asleep.

It is snowing outside,
The dark blindly asserting itself.
She steps naked from the dark room
Into the cool circle of light.

Her reflection.
The mirror she can’t escape,
Saying her name over and over
From somewhere wetter, more dangerous.

All she has done,
All she has planned
Has led to this.
Look how beautiful she is.

The dog at night – Mark Danowsky

YOU’RE OK, I say
for what must be time
two hundred tonight
but the words are
just words and only
desperation in tone
is heard, and growing.

Untitled(to Victor Cobo) – Rus Khomutoff

Untitled(to Victor Cobo)

Exit pleasures
inside the phantom of difference
isolating enterprises
of bluster and below
fragmentary truth
in lieu of definition
blue exorcist of the dirty old town
soulfire of ignorant bliss

Shaming – Kimberly Prijatel

Shaming

Sharon hopes to sleep in the lake
behind the house where it was taken years ago,
not by the amoebas in the puddles or the rain in the wind she keeps
thinking she’ll turn back
the almanac tide she brought, the salt
She stuck under the yellowing nail

Imagine the lover who never
came around the side for you, the different kinds of birds you waited for and
never saw. Imagine the arsonist’s
homeland is the orchard
full of its rabbling humiliations

the almanac peels and you ask it why
it never comes,

the fog thick enough to cover us.

Dingo-Yodel-Ay-Eee-Ooo – Erika Byrne-Ludwig

Through their enclosure, they watch us — wild, magnificent, inquisitive creatures. Their almond eyes are candid, impenetrable, with a glow wavering in them. Their erect hood-shaped ears twitch lightly. One of the females is purring — lips, teeth and tongue are vibrating as her paws wallow. On her gingery coat a pup rolls and stumbles. She wrestles him with superb feline agility.
In his hollow log, an older dingo coughs and sneezes; alarmed perhaps. Others are simply running and chasing each other in the reserve where king parrots fly in to feed on treats left hooked on trees. Under a eucalyptus, a pack of three dingoes play with short snorting sounds. I can see their large canines. Their tune and behaviour suddenly change from robust play to a standstill. What made them stop, I wonder. Now they’re stretching their necks and opening their mouths. Howling begins. A modulated succession of high and low-pitched notes. Is this some kind of signal? a visitor asks. The calls are quite recognisable. A yodel … the same visitor muses.
The keeper, an Indigenous man walking by, looks at us and mimics yodel-ay-ee-ooo … a yodel alright. Yes, my dingoes can yodel, he adds. Well … the dingo way … He points at the one on the sandstone look-out. That’s the clever one, he remarks. It’s mainly at sunset that he gets his best tune out. Something to do with the moon maybe … Or just calling …
The dingoes can yodel, someone in the group repeats. At that moment the howling stops, and the dogs return to play. All go for a chase, circling around bushes and trees, climbing on rocks and over fallen trees, until reaching our group watching at the fence. That’s where the maestro abruptly stops, comes near, stands on his hind legs and through the wire licks our hands. We say bravo to him. The other two linger there, watching on, too timid perhaps to make a move.
Next to me, Anna the Austrian tourist springs up with an idea. She walks away some steps, takes a few deep breaths and starts to yodel. I take some photos of the dingoes and of her standing in the shade of the bottlebrush. All dogs and pups are silent. The yodeler-dog stops licking the stretched hands to stare at her. I watch his yellow eyes, his ears, his tail. He is still on his hind legs. I sense an interest, a decision in the making, should I try or should I not, he seems to debate. Suddenly he runs back to the rock, points his head towards Anna and joins her in his own canine style. His other companions hesitate, growl, shake themselves, then join in too. Visitors are gathering around the sanctuary.
The keeper sits on a fallen gumtree, a dingo at his feet. As he pats him dreamily, he listens to the somewhat cacophonic notes coming from each side. His mind could be far away, in a different place, different setting, perhaps even in a different time zone. Some children start humming. The puppies seem excited and go back to test each other’s strength.
Mountains and wilderness … (a whisper faintly heard nearby) … what a wonderful mix!

The Realities of Separation – Marcus Medford

It’s been plaguing me lately,
The reality of separation.
The knowledge that our expiration date lie just around the corner.
Inching closer with every passing day.
When we’re together I laugh and I pretend that I don’t know it,
Act like I can’t feel it gnawing away at me
But not a day passes where it doesn’t cross my mind.
Everyday my affection towards you, my appreciation of you grows
Though I know that it won’t save us.

Love Can’t Be So Simple – Belle Giblett

How I think I must hate you
Over the fence
A garden of gerberas bright
Where you offer only lilies white

I want the adventure of thorns!

But you offer the simplicity of long white steams
As you march me to my end.

I Am Bound – A.J. Huffman

to this world by tethered strings,
tenuous filaments, familiar
fingers that cripple my feathers,
shave them until my skin bleeds
chaste indifference. Raw,
I am held by a gravity
I do not comprehend.
It weights me, like diamonds, uncut,
confused. I pile myself in cave-like corners,
coughing dust and spite
at every new ax that comes to pick.

Hard Liquor – Steve Sibra

I am not a drunk

but when the bottle talks, I listen.

Only a fool doubts the wisdom of bourbon on ice.

If the flames of my own fury

render me to ash – well then, whisk me away

to a quiet corner, or under the baseboard’s lip

I have nothing to offer

guests will track me all over your good carpet

so brush off my dust

from the sagging doorway of your white-washed recollection.

 

Above all

you must not let me sing, or play the piano

my music offends the spirits.

I don’t mean the ones in the bottle

I mean the ones who melt from the walls like apologies

to God for the Death of Love

The ones who proliferate all suffering and misery

 

The ones who cast out anvils like fishing lures

to crush the heads of the bleating flock

to sink the hopes of the righteous and forbearing.

 

The ones who bathe in the blood of the innocents

congeal on the surface of the organized mind

clot in the throat like a sunken promise

 

I mean the ones who distill all thought

In to purest regret

behind unlit windows of unbroken pain.

The Unbecoming – Annaliese Feininger

I don’t want to write
any more sad poems about you.
I want to celebrate
the love instead.

Sunsets, thighs,
ocean eyes.

The tides now tug my
hair like your fingertips.

I never left you my slip
to remember my face –
to give you a Murakami taste.

I know I sent you on A Wild Sheep’s Chase.

You told me last night
what a waste I was, to let you go
without a fight.
Darling, I fought
for us day and night.

Through whispers and screams
nightmares and dreams –

I won’t write any more
sad poems about you.

For the day came
when I heard your name,
turned my head,
and smiled through.