by Meggie Royer
In a past life my great-aunt believed she was a monk, resplendent in marigold robes, offerings cloaking her doorstep like a shroud. There was a heron against the water in her dreams, so pale it shone like hair. In the life before that she was a boy in a cave, younger than I could ever picture her, hiding coins in the dirt. It was a privilege, to end one life and wake in another, to falter in the way love falters, to see her likeness moving around the corner like a cloud. When I knew her, I knew myself. I saw her; I saw what she buried, I saw that some of us spend our whole lives moving away from what moves toward us. Meggie Royer (she/her) is a Midwestern writer and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters, a journal for abuse survivors. She has won numerous awards and has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. She thinks there is nothing better in this world than a finished poem. Her work can be found at https://meggieroyer.com.
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by D.W. Baker
pantoum collage after Martha Lundin To be a witch is to love the natural world more than the things human hands have made. We name women who spend too much time with nature Witch, but the line between goddess and witch is thin-- I was always sure of my identity: I was part of her. We name women who spend too much time with nature Witch. (We name things we want to control after women.) I was always sure of my identity: I was part of her-- In this one body, there is no need for names. We name things we want to control after women, but the line between goddess and witch is thin: In this one body, there is no need for names-- To be a witch is to love the natural world more than the things human hands have made. D.W. Baker is a submerging poet from St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, who writes about place, bodies, belonging, and the end of the world. His work appears in Green Ink Poetry, Snowflake Magazine, Feral Poetry, and elsewhere. He is a poetry reader for Hearth & Coffin. See more at linktr.ee/dwbaker by Patrick Wright
you post pictures of funny-walking seagulls and crumb-loving pigeons. from a distance I imagine a mother and child, clambering over rocks, eating crêpes, paddling waist-high. as lifeguards supervise, your message arrives on ‘the uncanniness of arcade machines, a run-down town, a rag-and-bone tumbleweed place, a bustle of back streets, antique shops …’ meanwhile, my device is streaming blue skies, terns perched on promenade lights, a laughing sailor: come laugh with Jolly Jack. I reply: ‘I hope to never meet him under moonlight.’ you heart this line. you’re far, while I’m at a loose end. you text as you trudge up the steps, put the fun in the funicular, sign-off with emojis and gifs, nothing but a screen of hieroglyphics. Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight of Her (Black Spring), which was nominated for the John Pollard Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The North, Southword, Poetry Salzburg, Agenda, Wasafiri, and London Magazine. by Alana Kelsall
we arrived as couples at the rebirthing centre mats lined up like rafts his arm around my shoulder I dropped to a crouch angled my huge belly into line wondered who would succumb first to the tug of sleep draw up the flood of their birth? our best friend trumpeted his snores in no time roped back sheepish into the shadowy room whale music probing the walls feeling like a cabbage adrift in a field I slipped towards a dark watery eye was it a fish? how human is it to breathe? the Denisovans once roamed across vast mountain ranges leaping from crag to outcrop without losing their breath a gene they bequeathed to the Tibetans where did they come from those climbers how did they die out? were they somewhere between a fish and a bird able to lean into storms with breath and bone? how did my body erase my fearful mind during labour with each surge to the end? will our children’s children have to breathe through water learn how to float to higher ground? Alana Kelsall is an award-winning writer of poetry and prose who lives on unceded Wurundjeri land. She recently won second prize in the June Shenfield Award, and was longlisted for the Liquid Amber Poetry Prize. Her poetry is forthcoming in the Australian Poetry Anthology. by Steph Amir
Blue ink exploded onto unidentified viscera, or perhaps it’s four co-dependent animals huddled in a grisly lump, with a jellyfish wobble yet not jellyfish at all. Steph Amir’s poems have been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Foam:e, Plumwood Mountain, Rabbit, StylusLit, TEXT, and others. In 2021, she was a Writer’s Victoria Writeability Fellow and in 2022 was shortlisted for the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Writing Awards for poetry. She recently published her debut collection, “Pieces That Fit." by Frank William Finney
Meat cutting class. Lesson of the day: How to cut a veal flank steak. My classmates took it all in stride: the glassy eyes, the hindlegs bound, the sheet of blood beneath the calf’s head, flies on the walls, and drunk in the air. Blood on the blades of the ceiling fan. Outside the room, the fields smelt green. Horsetails swished in the afternoon sun. Frank William Finney is the author of The Folding of the Wings (Finishing Line Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Flora Fiction, Freshwater Literary Journal, Metachrosis Literary, and other places. He lives and writes in Massachusetts. by Polly Grant Butler
inside an ad there is an ad and it is saying eat me I tell myself even mary would have gagged on cock, after all was said and done a laptop on a bed brings the devil into focus it says the ring of fire is a burger and a breast the breast is the bottle and its absence is a presence to fuck is to eat and abstaining is transcendent sliding down my hands I want it fat and wet like a morning shit like I’m doing it quick the taste of butter curdling in my spine I sip the day like a cheap charade book film or play it’s all you. anyway. how your milky taste belies the body but this is a body, a stuffed buffet fisting into fullness. the news has a sponsor with a finger down its throat I bargain with delivery drivers to see the world up close I want you like I am a baby and you are the nipple on the screen they say I’m loving it, the eternal sauce I’m loving it, to be hungry is to be unspecific and I refuse anything not vague mustard licked hands fluorescent screaming light Polly Grant Butler lives in Adelaide, where she works for independent publishing house Wakefield Press. She writes poetry and short stories. ![]() by Liam Wallace A boy drowned some years ago On a beach with a name that I forget. No one saw him enter the water So nothing can be said for his intention His purpose undetermined His face a blank canvas marked by Only a smattering of freckles A surfer noticed the boy Swept up by a rip, unable/unwilling to untangle Himself from the pull and tug Of increasingly harsh Ocean water. The surfer called out Before he paddled towards the boy, Thrusting his old waxen board underneath A succession of waves Unsure of whether he was more than A speck viewed from the shoreline The boy sunk further out and further down, Only hands flailing above unforgiving Blue. I do not know When the surfer returned to shore. Only that The boy did not. Liam Wallace (they/them) is a recent graduate from the University of Wollongong in environmental humanities, history and sustainable development. They love reading and are also a keen runner. Liam tutors primary school students and enjoys getting to share ideas about writing with them. by Nikita Kostaschuk
my housemate tells me I am a chore to live with, says I am always coming home in chaos, says the mess and jumble of it is too much for him. doesn't he know about the bumble of bees in my head? I swear he did. I swore he could hear them through the walls in his room when I am trying to sleep. all they do is dance their paths to the pollen stuck to everything I say. they only want to make honey. they wax lyrical, build hexagons in my head to contain it all. all the mess and jumble of the world is too much for me to contain alone. I thought he could taste the sweetness that leaks from my every word but he just leaves the world hollow. he doesn't understand that I am the swarm, the secateurs, the flower, that within me lies an eternal Spring. Nikita Kostaschuk (ink.eyta) is a spoken wordsmith hailing from meanjin/brisbane. a background in English Literature interplays in their work with their lived experience of autism, gender, trauma, humanity and brokenness. a facilitator of spoken spaces, ink.eyta organizes SpeakEasy Poetry Open Mic. by Audrey T. Carroll
We know nothing about gender & even less outside our species There are categories of hummingbirds we have named along a spectrum: male-like males female-like males male-like females female-like females & even this we only glean from an exterior, the observable: plumage brightness & bill length & tail length It is quite possibly impossible to know anything beyond this, anything about their gender roles gender expression without imposing foreign concepts Gender is a complex web, something known but unknown inside of us but beyond us named but individual performed expressed seen unseen cultural social the us to whom we speak in the dark Our own gender is a cosmos & we are children with plastic telescopes hoping to catch a glimpse of Venus or Mars or something in between & mostly what we see are a million stars we cannot name, a million stars we can barely even describe Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024) and Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). She is a bi/queer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram. |
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August 2023
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Photo used under Creative Commons from John Donges