New Poetry by JD DeHart

Memoir

Our stories are told through
dust, and the sound of wheels
traveling over coarse earth.

Our stories are told through
struggle, long treks up the river,
unknown forests.

Sometimes our stories are even
told in grand mysteries of the sky,
resurrection touching winter.

Marginal figures who went on
to become the hero of the narrative.


- JD DeHart 2018

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.  He blogs about books and authors at dehartreadingandlitresources.blogspot.com and publishes poems at onpossibilitypoems.blogspot.com.

New Poetry by Heather Browne

Implanted

There was a break in the ocean
a split 
taking it down to the sand
exposing rock and shell 
coral
hardening in the air 
dying if touched

The ocean wanted to feel the sun 
burning below
the pain sharp and pointed
instead of languid inebriation 
the incessant drunkenness of waves 
even a crash is softened
It wanted to be stripped 
down bare to the spine
where every rock tossed stays implanted
hearing the beat striking
the bottom 
taking hold and digging in 
leaving its mark


- Heather Browne 2018

Heather M. Browne is a faith-based psychotherapist, recently nominated for the Pushcart Award, published in the Orange Room, Boston Literary Review, Page & Spine, Eunoia Review, Poetry Quarterly, Red Fez, Electric Windmill, Apeiron, The Lake, Knot, mad swirl.  Red Dashboard  released her first collection, Directions of Folding.  

New Poetry by James Croal Jackson

Homesick (Dissociation)

Tulip tree in Alaska. Cold
and wild. Rembrandt blue

Christmas lights, shepherd
pie a warmth of familiar metal

stovetop. Doorstep. Gold
beneath nothing but rusted shovel

mnemonic arms repping
dumbbells. Must be strong

in clumps of conviction. The south
says the creator God’s a yes.

Freeform jazz. Bubbled
champagne. Festivals devoted

to home. Houston before me,
Texas a pink tie knotted.


- James Croal Jackson 2018

James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in Hobart, FLAPPERHOUSE, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle, a poetry journal. Find him in Columbus, Ohio or at jimjakk.com.

New Poetry by Ed Wright

Screen of Death

When people die they go to television
and audition for their elevation.
Some are extra, others star
now it doesn’t matter. In my coffin
on the conveyor to the furnace
I dreamed that I might read the news or sing a song
on a talent show called What Went Wrong.
The flames forgot to touch me, but how to sing
one minute I was there, the next one gone –
a high note for when 
the clot exploded in my brain – sustained like a tragic diva
for the journey up the tunnel
of my last embodied thought:
pancakes hot and syrupy;
the sweet tart slightly gingerpop of blueberries with cream. 
I left my loved ones in the kitchen – now
they’re on the couch – large as life –
of the earth – intangible – 
channel surfing – for me? –
just outside the screen. 
Ghosts are prettier than people– making up for the past – or
just making it up – our blemishes 
are lessened by the lost dimension.
On the third week of my death
I rose again – from the casting couch –
and sang of tinned spaghetti –
May the sauce be with you! 
Sing it like you mean it – the director snarled, 
Then they showered me in the stuff. 
On a nearby set they were sequelling
The Sound of Music – perhaps
I could understudy the captain
and marry sweet Maria.A nice lady, 
who introduced herself
as the executive producer
came over with a towel
have faith, she said, have faith
and then I knew
as I dabbed the gunk from my eyes
that we would shoot the ad 
jingle all the way to hell 
again 
and again 
and again …


- Ed Wright 2018

Ed Wright is the author of six non-fiction books including Lost Explorers (Pier 9) and Ghost Colonies (Pier 9). His first full-length collection of poetry, When Sky Becomes the Space Inside Your Head, was published by Puncher and Wattman in 2012. He currently writes the New Australian Fiction review column for the Australian and is Director of The Creative Word Shop. He lives in Newcastle with his wife and two children.

New Poetry by David Lander

KRIA (young Alpaca) 

For twenty minutes we watched him try to leave his mother. 
He hung like a rag, head down, looking at his new world, 
like a passenger on a cruise ship, curious, astonished 
at soil, smells, grass, but not able to go ashore. 

His skull was wet; white wool tousled like a child’s, towel-rubbed, from the bath. 
He hung upside down, a rabbit in the hand, fighting against the gripping flesh, 
the possessive darkness behind, reaching for this new light, the sweet grass.
He rolled his eyes. 

I gripped his skull, shaped like a cup, fingers round the rim where 
it met the neck and pulled. Nothing. His body was held tight by something 
formidable. His mother, standing still as if this were just another day. 
an occasional grunt suggesting he wasn’t trying hard enough. 

Then out he came, a spindly scaffold of legs and neck. He was active 
on the instant trying to stand, collapsing, wanting to go but remaining, 
desperate to walk, to be, to grow, to taste and see and hear and graze 
and run and rut and call and spit and fight and join.

But the universe crowded in on him. There was no space for him. 
No air moved aside for him, no room was made for him. 
Light bruised him. His mother moved away from him. 
He spoke. He knew. He was not welcome. He folded his knees and sat. 

We stood him up. He sat down. We stood him up. He sat down.
He knew the truth – this place was not for him. We fed him, touched him,
held him, told him he was bold, but truth had entered him. 
He was not wanted. So he folded his knees and sat and died. 

- David Lander 2018

David  has previously published in The Australian, The Age, Overland, Tirra Lirra and Australian Poetry. He has had careers in education and theater. He now lives with his partner in Hobart, Tasmania.

New Words by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Along the Way

Having fallen for various reasons, there was to be seen a parade of animal corpses by the side of the road along the highway. This was in sharp contrast to the beautiful fauna, the incandescent fields of yellow flowers.

There was a lot of land, ramshackle outbuildings, many of which had holes in their walls doing slow hemorrhages of straw, twigs and other bird’s nest minutia.

With the timing of a musician, managing to make the car do a gradual slide into a stop upon the loose gravel that ended right before several cracked flagstones which led up to the bowed steps of the porch.

 She had been perspiring. So in my own head had I been, that I had not realized how moist I too had become.  Turning towards me, her chin touched her chest and her shoulders rose up to her ears.

“I am not here…alone. I mean usually I am by myself but it’s not my place. Hang out for a minute while I see if anyone is home.”

I watched her go up the steps, each of which gave off a sharp creak as soon as it felt her weight upon it. Once it became apparent that she would not be right back, I walked around the side of the house.

A little ways past the house I saw an enclosure and movement. There were four metal gates as would normally slide open to let cattle out of a pen. Instead of being attached to anything else though, each one leaned against the other, all keeping one another propped up in the manner of a house of cards.

In the middle of this makeshift coral which had no discernable entrance was an ostrich. I had read somewhere that they could be big but this one was far larger than I expected even a bigger one to be.

There was a chain around its neck, kept in place by a horseshoe shaped nut and bolt. It glared at me without having consciously made the decision to do so. I began to slowly back away. For some reason this upset it more than me just standing there.

It took a few steps, quickly finding its movements hindered by the chain. The ostrich opened its mouth wide. I do not know if it was anger or pain but it emitted a terrible noise.

Its mouth was now wide open, so wide that, it obscured the view of its head. Looking at it straight on, all that could be viewed was a gynecological, slightly curved pink diamond with deep grooves which sloped downwards towards a black center.

Bethany returned. She had not meant to startle me but as unpleasant as it was I had determined not to take my eyes off of the ostrich until I was in the clear and so had jumped at her touch. Her hair was pulled back and she had on a different shirt.

Despite having cleaned up, I could still smell the drink on her along with the scent of both her sweat and mine.

Right now she had absinthe eyes. Regardless of what actions occurred that she may forget tomorrow she would be rich when upon waking they turned to rubies.

Softly laughing, she told me that the coast was clear.

The house was in a state of disarray and so it was impossible to tell how many people she shared it with or that of her connection to them.

We made our way through the thrift store shambles to a tiny back room that had only one small ripped screened window that was partially blocked by a free standing mirror. The two of us rolled around on the already unmade bed, telling each other lies. Muscle contraction transmissions over, we both drowsed, her falling first.

Briefly, I awoke several hours later and thought that in the stillness of the late hour I had heard the soft slapping of the ostrich’s chain against the makeshift prison wall.

The next morning was not as awkward as it could have been. I brushed my teeth using my index finger while she selected a tee shirt for herself from among the pile on the floor.

There was the start of a headache crawling out from behind my eyes, which I stubbornly insisted to myself was on account of the heat and not the drinks.

Bethany said that she would drive me back. In the car I was quiet but not sullen. I had an attack of bashfulness which prevented me from asking to stop for some coffee. The ride back seemed hell of a lot quicker than the initial ride out for which I was grateful.

She pulled over by the curb. Surprisingly, she too got out of the car. 

“We had fun?”

I nodded.

“I like you, you’re a nice guy.”

“Really, I am not.”

She fell into my arms murmuring the name of a trumpet player and then something in Spanish.

Without first asking permission, she used the pen that my girlfriend had gotten me to list all the places that she would be putting in an appearance on Saturday night.

After she drove away I turned the piece of paper over. It was a receipt for suntan lotion and a box of peppermints.

Finis

- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2018

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by William G. Davies Jr.

Winter

The skin
of the river
pools pink
surging into
the stony penumbra
of the Rockville bridge,
its archways
mini-coronations
of water
to a curvature
of the sun.


Christmastide

Cows lie idle
in the field,
their jaws a rhythmic
assembly-line sameness
and breath-exultant brumal
of cold, sweet cud.


- William G. Davies Jr. 2018

William had a small collection published, “Before There Were Bones”, by Prolific Press in 2015. He is currently studying to be a Deacon in the Catholic Church.

New Poetry by Linda Stevenson

Lemons

Our lemons were so prolific
we dragged them around
in sacks, I mean potato sacks,
the stitched up ones
with gaping wounds,
smelling of potato digs
and black earth.

Wondrously overstocked
with lemons, we gave them away
by the gross, piled them
out on the nature strip for any takers,
brewed gallons upon heat-wave gallons
of carb soda lemonade,
occasionally spiced with a lime.

I took to climbing, ladder
and branch, loved pulling against
the fruits’ resist, gathering, letting fall,
pitching some towards baskets;
on the ground they piled up,
a harvest, between the silver beet
and carrots.

Now, I own one small tree,
planted in half a barrel; it sits
on concrete in a space I’m pleased
to call “back garden”. It’s doing well,
bore sixteen juice-filled offerings
last season. I’m so proud
of its valiant flowering. 


- Linda Stevenson 2018

Linda is a founding member of Melbourne Poets Union, facilitator of poetry groups in gaols and community centres, contributor to anthologies, recently published in various literary magazines. Chapbook "The Tipping Point" published in 2015, active as a poet within the online poetry sector.

New Poetry by Mohammad Ali Maleki

Treason

First the wolves and jackals united
to rule and control us.
Then the vultures and rooks
wanted a share in our torture
and became guards.
The jungle trees joined in,
promising thick branches for axe-
handles to sever our roots and limbs;
pouring our blood on the ground
for the beasts to feast on.

Next the swamps and rivers united
to stop our water.
The wheat-farmers and millers
agreed to deny us bread.
The clouds colluded with the sky
to throw their rain on the desert
and leave us thirsty.
And the storms conjoined
with the winds to crush us
like autumn leaves under their boots.

All worked together to harvest
our humanity, manhood and bravery—
killing kindness and planting their curses instead.


- Mohammad Ali Maleki 2018

(translated by Mansour Shoshtari)

Mohammad Ali Maleki is an Iranian poet and avid gardener who has been living in detention on Manus Island for four years. His poem ‘The Strong Sunflower’ was the first work published on Verity La’s Discoursing Diaspora project. Since then, Mohammad’s writing has been published by Bluepepper and by the Blue Mountains Refugee Support Group. He has been a featured poet on Rochford Street Review, and his poems and letters have been included in the Dear Prime Minister project and at the Denmark Festival of Voice.  His poem ‘Tears of Stone’ was shortlisted for the Red Room Company’s New Shoots Poetry Prize 2016 and received Special Commendation for extraordinary work in extreme circumstances.

New Poetry by Abigail George

The city lights of Port Elizabeth or take my hand if you’re afraid

(for Joop Bersee and in memory of Rainer Maria Rilke)

    All the bare necessities of writing

    are found at an empty table. Figs and tea.
    The flame of language is found there. Hot
    ink. Writing. Prayer. People are found
    milling in gardens in the summer heat drinking.
    Eating good cheese and bread because
    it is the season of eating good cheese
    and bread. The writer hovers. He belongs.
    She belongs but she is not part of the
    group. She’s just an observer. Writers
    watch through the window. Watching
    the voices until there’s nothing but the heat.
    Burning Midwest prairies. Cacti in desert-land.
    Thirsty for thin black veils to cover the ocean-wind and sea
    that aren’t found there. Only sky. Only
    sky. Creeping up like sunlight. Everything
    happened so fast. Oh, insane rapture’s
    shadowboxing game! This honey in the
blood. This evil-sound of weeping. This smoke
    kissing springtime courage and harsh
    anguish silent all these years. Now there’s

all this expectation. Rewrites of heart-

    ache on my body. Seduction theories.
    I had solitude. I wanted disasters to be
    kind to me. I was alive even in those
    empty moments. I brought submission to the kitchen table.

    The neon light is lovely here. The city
lights of Port Elizabeth a blessing. A man’s
    heart is gold. A woman’s heart sacred
    machine. Sad girl listen for the birdsong

    in Tokyo. All I want is a library to keep
    me warm on my voyage to China away
    from this country of tragedy. The wedding
    of leaf and darkness is closing in. You’ll

    find monsters at the deep end. They’re
    there at the edge of the city lights if you
    look hard enough. You’ll find the auras
    of soil and water. Dust and heat. The photograph of an artist in her hands.

    Remember the tranquil daylight. Then finally
death. Don’t be frightened to close your eyes to it.


- Abigail George 2018

Pushcart Prize nominee for her fiction "Wash Away My Sins", Abigail George is a South African blogger, essayist, poet, short story writer and aspirant novelist. She is the recipient of writing grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, the Centre for the Book in Cape Town and ECPACC in East London. She briefly studied film and television production at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. Her literary work has been published in various anthologies, numerous times in print in South Africa and in e-zines based in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Finland, the UK, the United States, and across African in Nigeria and Istanbul, Turkey.

New Poetry by David Ades

Becoming Flame

When heart is taken from you, torn,

when a child is taken, land, home, innocence, naiveté,
the way everything is perceived,

when what was full has been emptied

and what remains is the dark hole of emptiness
into which you fall and fall,

the person you were dies, becomes another,

carrying the unseen weight of loss, of grief,
like a clinging child that won’t let go,

so that what was taken can never be returned.

What survives depends on will, on character,
on the ability to transform,

to become phoenix rising from ashes,

to war constantly against hollowness —
and in becoming other, becoming more,

more than shadow, more than shell,

more than something broken, something spent,
and of every weight carried, every loss,

becoming shrine, tribute, spirit.


- David Ades 2018

David Ades has lived in Sydney since 2016. He is curating a new monthly poetry reading series commencing in February at Castle Hill Library featuring one poet reading and discussing his or her work and focusing on a theme of the poet’s choice.

Bluepepper would like to welcome you all to the new year and announce that we are once again open for submissions. Just follow the submission guidelines at the top of the task bar.

New Poetry by James Walton

Inverloch – Cape Paterson Road, late August

The car park at Eagle’s Nest is nearly empty
and down the steep staircase, neatly arriving people
trickle in hesitation of a complete view.
A full tide has spread spongy wilted sand
all soft without reflection, a copse of twisted wattle
holds to purpose where the erosion bites.
Warning Signs don’t stop visitors from testing
the Strait’s gritty pull, the sea’s hypnotic stride
tap dancing away on the buckle bright shoreline.
Kelp is wedged up at each end of the bay
a russet parenthesis in need of  expression, idling cormorants
glide by in their defiant bobbing coiffure.
A Winter moon is stitched on a light denim sky
prescient in daytime; some Iranian children
laugh out Hello Mister chasing their runaway kite.
Beyond the craggy hide the Cape bends in reverse crescent
eyebrows over an ocean face, cars make a way
as greying follicles of squint into the receding west.


- James Walton 2017

James Walton is an Australian poet published in newspapers, and many journals, and anthologies. Short listed twice for the ACU National Literature Prize, a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition - his collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ was published in 2015. He was a librarian, a farm labourer, a cattle breeder, and a public sector union official.

New Poetry by Keith Moul

In Youth, There Comes a Strange Spirit

Space, as after a sprint, intercedes.
Before the start, during the mark
on the blocks, and after the start
have all passed. Breath comes hard
at 400 metres, at a loss to look back.

My grandkids, full of strange spirit,
understand the race, but less a need
to see it through, like a calf’s birth,
or the harvest subjected to its ruin,
may never come alive, but stillborn.

The prairie circles the arriving thunder,
the way sky absorbs the starting shot;
the prairie lies prone, in wait for games;
men on the horizon are not near, nor
can they make headway through space.


- Keith Moul 2017

Keith Moul's poems and photos are published widely. Finishing Line Press released his chap, The Future as a Picnic Lunch, in November, 2015. Aldrich Press has published Naked Among Possibilities in August 2016 and has released Not on any Map in August, 2017; Finishing Line published Investment in Idolatry early in 2017. The above poem is from a new work about prairie life through U.S. history, including migration, regional trials/conflicts, character, and attachment to the land.

New Poetry by David Lander

Cousin

Night. The wind frets.

Squeezed close in your sitting room we
discuss our cousin. We love him but
is he that cuddly eccentric he appears or
does he strangle children?

‘Course not. We laugh and read his work and laugh again
and paint the picture of his life.
We pause again and think again, concerned
by his rural isolation. How
the world folds in on him, on us,
how we have become what we were not.

We read again and laugh again but
close the curtains, stoke up the fire,
listen as your house shifts in the wind
and talk of something else,

return again to what we would prefer not to;
his life, circumstance, our lives,
what we were, might have been and have become,
what we knew and what we guessed,
what he saw in that small town, that road to nowhere.

We hold his life up like a torch seeing ours.
in stark relief. Shadows deepen.
Your house is quiet. The fire settles.
The wind has gone elsewhere
fretting done for now.


- David Lander 2017

David  has previously published in The Australian, The Age, Overland, Tirra Lirra and Australian Poetry. He has had careers in education and theater. He now lives with his partner in Hobart, Tasmania.

New Poetry by Caroline Reid

The Gift

The fine white ceramic face  
of the Japanese teacup
is wrinkled, as if it already lived a life
before it came here to grow old.

I drink from the side
where a single magnolia petal
folds over the lip.
I hold the marmalade flower
in my mouth
without spilling a drop.

When I proclaimed that I could no longer stand
drinking coffee out of thick-lipped mugs
you went off quietly to Little Tokyo
at the Central Markets and came home
with the teacup wrapped in turquoise tissue
slumbering in your palms.

We sat opposite each other 
in our usual spots at the table,
me facing the fridge
you the fireplace,
to unwrap the gift,
me with sprinting fingers
you with your eyes.

I like to think the teacup was hand-painted
by some Japanese master
the colours carefully selected
marmalade magnolia instead of orange
stamens of candle-glow yellow and gold
leaves mottled lapis, copper and bronze
but I know that no-one could have crafted this cup
with the same reverence in which you gave it.

You are in every teacup of coffee I drink.
You, who listen calmly to my daily proclamations
as if they were poetry
before you rub sleep from your eyes
and in the evenings, unlacing dusty boots
at our back door.


- Caroline Reid 2017

A writer of poetry, short stories and plays, Caroline Reid regularly performs her work and was a state finalist in South Australia's State Poetry Slam in 2016 and 2017. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies including Bath Flash Fiction Award, Verity La, 4W, Indigo, Seizures and Review of Australian Fiction. Last year she was emerging writer in residence at the SA Writers Centre where she completed a draft of her novel in progress, No Place for Children.

New Poetry by Christine Brandel

The Blood Stones

Some green stones had been left by the daffodils
at your grave. Little green stones, not black, not hearts.
I fingered everything there, the flowers, the mirror,
your name and his. The stones were green and I wanted one,
but didn’t think that right. I am not like the others,
believe me (I think you would). I stopped at a nearby shop
and bought two blood stones. Their green was darker.
I left one on your headstone (for the Jewish blood in us both)
and kept one in my pocket. It’s there now. Like you are.


- Christine Brandel 2017

Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. Her book A Wife is a Hope Chest was released on Halloween 2017 as the first full-length collection in the Mineral Point Poetry Series from Brain Mill Press. She also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rights the world's wrongs via her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.

New Poetry by John Grey

Holy Week

A giant papier-mâché Diablo
totters down the street,
arms thrashing,
head spitting out fireworks -

the children are afraid -
their parent's laugh

except for the deeply religious -
with them it's the other way around

the saints
are less gaudy,
quieter -
piety doesn't do
sparks and flames -

then comes the skeleton,
black and white -
he was human -
he can go either way.


- John Grey 2017

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Tau, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Examined Life Journal and Midwest Quarterly.  

 

New Poetry by Mark O'Flynn

Quiet Decibels

Next door’s radio mumbles to itself.
A sudden bird flees another across the roof,
a donkey on tip-toes brays in the evening distance.
Not everyone can say as much
of the afternoon’s quiet wealth,
how its serenade knits the various
ages of the day together,
the gleam of spider web clinging to the air
like a floating fibre of lung, a tightrope
of light between two porch posts, the dew
settling for the night on tomorrow’s raw dawn.
These esoteric signs are everywhere
if signs they are, the future tropes
unguaranteed. Things might
contradict themselves, I hope.
Such simplicity is finite – the natural
bedfellows of harmony and discord.          
That pebble in my shoe
will make itself eventually known.
Not everyone can say as much.


- Mark O'Flynn 2017

Mark O'Flynn's most recent novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon was a finalist in the 2017 Miles Franklin Award. His latest collection of poems is Shared Breath published by Hope Street Press.

This Oval of Light

I am taking this rare opportunity to editorialise for the sake of Bluepepper's readers north of the line who may be wondering whatever became of "the wonder downunder".

One of the few advanced economies to have survived the GFC relatively intact, through a combination of sheer luck and some wise and timely policy initiatives. A nation prepared to say sorry to its original inhabitants for the many injustices inflicted on them, to walk across a bridge, and then for some reason stop and turn around. A nation that was once one of the great immigration success stories of the post-war era, but that now appears to have become the unwitting prototype for heartless, short-sighted immigration policy the world over. A nation that provided more than its fair share of overseas aid, a nation that reached out rather than folded its arms at the spectacle of a world in crisis. A nation that once stood at the vanguard of innovation but that now languishes way way back of the pack. The same for its stance on climate change, an area of public policy that seems to have become a graveyard for any kind of political visionary in this country. 

While the rest of the world foundered after the crash of 2007/2008, the "wonder down under" racked up ridiculous amounts of household debt, turning wall-eyed and solipsistic in the process. While many (mostly older) Australians made obscene amounts of money in the real estate boom, just as many (mostly younger) Australians were lumped with stagnant wages and a steeply rising cost of living, student debts that their parents never had to worry about, a collective shrug at their understandable reservations about the direction the country was taking, particularly in regards to climate change, rising inequality, and the issue of marriage equality.

The latter has been the subject of a recent plebiscite, and now that the votes are in and only waiting to be counted, I feel free to express my disgust at the tactics employed by those on the right, their heartless scaremongering, the bald-faced lies and naked hypocrisy. It is too early to tell how much damage this clumsy and completely unnecessary process has caused. Sadly only time will tell, and perhaps by then it will be too late, even if, as predicted, the plebiscite returns a resounding YES to the proposition that all citizens of this country should be equal before the law. This matter should not even be up for debate in a modern liberal pluralistic democracy, but it is and those who assume to be society's moral guardians have exploited the fact to their undying shame. The wreckers in our federal parliament will have to answer to their consciences, if they can find them amongst the rubble of their many discarded promises.

 In short, this wonderful country is broken. Each day the disparity grows between the haves and the have-nots. A nation blessed with abundant resources is witnessing families unable to heat their homes or cook their children dinner because they simply cannot afford the exorbitant and steadily rising costs of gas and electricity. The fault for this is not theirs but of politicians at both the state and federal level who have lacked both the imagination and courage to face the challenges of climate change and the epochal shift in international attitudes to power generation. Now, while the Japanese government rakes in significant import revenue on OUR gas, our children shiver and go hungry to school.

And as though this were not enough, we witness the tragic farce of the citizenship fiasco that has already cut a swathe through the federal parliament and threatens to bring any semblance of governance in this country to a grinding halt. We can expect a raft of legal challenges by vested interests to bills passed by politicians who, by the fact of their undisclosed dual citizenship, were not entitled to be sitting in the parliament in the first place, let alone as part of the executive. And now they are busily denying the obvious need for a "citizenship audit" to ensure no further nasty surprises, while badgering the most vulnerable in our community to pay back welfare debts they simply do not owe. When, if ever, will we see an apology from those responsible for the so-called "robo-debt" fiasco for the many lives ruined and lost to despair? I suspect the answer is never.

This is what has become of "the wonder downunder" my northern friends, and it is a cautionary tale. When we turn our backs on the system, when we opt out, refuse to vote, shut our eyes and ears to what is happening around us, then we leave the running of affairs to vested interests who will plunder what they can, turn a tidy profit, and then move on. In this bright new shiny neo-liberal, post 9-11 world of ours, capital moves freely while the individual's freedom of movement grows ever more impeded. Public assets are sold off to often rather nefarious private interests with no visible gain to the public weal. Quite the opposite. Roads, rail, port facilities, utilities, in fact infrastructure of every kind now sits in private, largely unaccountable hands. My generation has not only let this happen, many of us have been willing participants. And for that I apologise wholeheartedly to those coming after me.

I will end this bleak scree with some words from an Australian poet from the generation immediately before mine, the infamous "Boomer" generation with which we X-ers have carried on a love-hate relationship for many years:

I believe this wick and this open book

in the light's oval, and I disbelieve

everything this generation has told me.

- Robert Harris "Isaiah by Kerosene Lantern Light" (1986)

I thank you for your time. And remember to always keep poetry in your lives.

New Poetry by John Bartlett

Night

Night falls too early now
Birds fold themselves up
Like faded Christmas cards

Clocks speed up their complaining
Cars creep towards home
Fog like a smokers’ cough

Friends leave through the open door
Coats and scarves are left behind
The beach washed clear of footprints

We wait in darkened rooms
Voices calling in the distance
A choir of galloping angels


- John Bartlett 2017

John Bartlett‘s non-fiction and essays have been widely published and will be collated into an e-book entitled A Tiny and Brilliant Light to be released in November 2017. He is the author of two novels, Towards a Distant Sea and Estuary and a collection of short stories, All Mortal Flesh.He blogs regularly at: http://beyondtheestuary.com/

New Poetry by Holly Day

In the Waiting Room
        
He comes into the lobby holding the little plastic bag
knuckles white and tight
as though he doesn't ever want to let it go. 
He drops it on the receptionist's desk

like a lion dropping the broken body of its cub
after some horrible accident, some catastrophic mauling
face contorted in resolution and anger
dismay and confusion. From where I'm sitting
in the back of the room with the other happily fat, pregnant women
reading magazines about breastfeeding and diaper technology
I can see just enough of the tiny gray body inside the bag
the parts not wrapped in white tissue paper

one thin arm, impossibly small and delicate
a perfect little foot
no blood.

"The doctor asked me to bring this in, " he says loudly
challenging the look of dismay on the receptionist's face. 
"She didn't pass it until this morning." The receptionist takes the bag 
with one quick, practiced sweep, hiding it between her body and the wall
as she takes it in the back room for the doctor. 
As she leaves, the man stares us all down,
daring us to acknowledge his presence, his anguish, 
daring us to recognize 

the painful events that brought him here. 


- Holly Day 2017

Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.