Blue Bottle Journal
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • Masthead
  • Press
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • Masthead
  • Press

Blue Bottle Journal
poetry with sting

that you have nowhere else to be

27/6/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
by Jordan Barling

that you arrive with cigarettes and beer
not even a change of clothes
only a toothbrush in the cloth handbag
that you wear bandolier 
collect the Vietnamese take-away and empty the bins
chaining on the apartment balcony as I make calls
that you stay for days even though the best I can offer
is the fold out couch 
purchased for a beach house in 1986
each evening we bend the armrests back
this is what it must feel like to
realign the spine

Jordan Barling is a Melbourne-based writer. Her poetry is included in the upcoming issue of Overland.
0 Comments

6pm bedroom floor

20/6/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
by Jax Bulstrode 
​
peeling mandarins
on your bedroom floor
the whole room swaying
with laughter
and the evening breeze
a storm rolling in
and potatoes in the oven
she is telling me about the bird
on her arm
blackened and eyes open
staring back at me

how do we start again?
with the colours
okay, the purple skyline outside
the window
cool static glow from the tv

now, the scent
of the cool rain coming
and sound
​
my favourite part
her voice beside me
calling my name

Jax Bulstrode writes poems in Naarm/Melbourne. She is usually writing about rivers or fruit or being queer. Jax has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic Journal, F*EMS and is forthcoming in Southchild Lit, Just femme & dandy and Enby life. You can find them at @jaxbulstrode on Twitter. 
0 Comments

Through a Paperbark Tree

15/6/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
by SoulReserve 

paperbark mouth drinks
floodplain blood, orange
into veins that spill sun,
light pushes itself into albino
flowers, dense and misshapen.

I stand on your roots, spread
beneath wetlands, body 
quivers, shakes with tethered
new seasons that rub 
salt into fresh wounds.

I crisp into paper, skin
golden brown and peeling 
like an alphabet long-written 
and forgotten, now speckled 
yellow sun-bleached memories.
​
I shed leaves, susurrating
through a murmur of wind,
tunnels through kaleidoscopic
light that burns nocturnal 
eyes and laughs and laughs.

SoulReserve is a wistful poet. Her poetry explores love and its tumultuousness, the fantasy and zest in nature, and allegories that provoke thought and evoke tender feelings. Read her published works in – "Across Vast Horizons", "Poetry d’Amour – 2019 & 2020", "Letters To Our Home", “Recoil 12” and WAPI’s “Creatrix.”
0 Comments

Let me Wade

3/6/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
by Lou Smith

knee deep in swamp

slick near swamp-edge

sludge under tread.

The blueberry ash, that grew as lanky 

as a cattleman, is what this

place was named after – Ash Island –

its petals like faeries’ frilly slips

under tiny pink / white dresses.

We hauled fish when it was safe 

–when islands hadn’t been 

cemented as land with slag–

when the slick didn’t fill their gills

with arsenic

Lou Smith is a poet based on Wurundjeri country in Melbourne. Her writing has been published in journals and anthologies including Soft Surface, Nine Muses Poetry, The Lifted Brow, and The Caribbean Writer. Her first collection of poetry riversalt was published by Flying Island Books in 2015. www.lousmith.net
0 Comments

    Blue Bottle

    Seeking words with sizzle, poetry that wraps us in burning ribbons and won't let go. Send us your best!

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photo used under Creative Commons from John Donges