by Rosalie Hendon

Your pale speckled body emerges
You perch weightless
on the arching leaves of the purple heart
 
Mantis and I, taking the air
companionably sharing
the September morning on my porch.
The air humid,
the sun just brushing the railing.
 
You fascinate me
Your praying forearms
bending backwards
Your knobby head, almost feline
The rise and fall of your low belly
Delicate antenna, almost too thin to see
 
You move slowly, feeling each foothold
Forward and back, forward and back
your body shifts
As if you’re gathering momentum
 
I sat with you, watched your slow motion
your intentional grace
for 30 minutes,
until the phone rang
and my computer beckoned–
All those emails and meetings
to attend to
 
As the sun grew low, I came out
to find you on the railing,
three-quarters of a porch away.
Is that how you spent six hours?
If so, I wonder which of us
had the more productive day?

Rosalie Hendon (she/her) is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work is published in Change Seven, Pollux, Willawaw, Write Launch, and Sad Girls Club, among others. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.

by Peter Mitchell

For sale: old dairy farm, Collins Creek Road, Kyogle.
Don & I inspect the ancient rooms & dairy.
In the sunroom, Doug & Barb sit on an old leather lounge.
Across from them, we sprawl on old club chairs.

In Collins Creek Road, an old dairy farm is for sale.
‘He’s useless, y’know.’ Don looks my way.
Across the room, we sprawl on old club chairs. 
Barb & Doug glance at each other, at me.

Don shakes his head. ‘He can’t use a chain-saw’. 
The storm words ache my head. Again!
Doug & Barb exchange looks, frown.
Ach, ach, ach! A crow warns, flies away.

The chain-saw’s teeth bite my shoulders.
Barb’s eyes fire-green; Doug raises his eye-brows.
Don smiles, his mouth a frozen grimace.
Outside, we walk. The dry grass cracks like broken egg-shells.    

Living in Lismore on Widjabul/Wia-bul Country, Nation, Peter Mitchell (he/his), writes across all narrative forms. His writing appears in international & national print platforms. He's authored two poetry chapbooks, Conspiracy of Skin (Ginninderra Press, 2018) & The Scarlet Moment (Picaro Press, 2009). Conspiracy of Skin was Highly Commended in the 2019 Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry. ​

by Angela Arnold

would need...what?
 
absolute tigertimes, real and total
and burning?
 
mock shots at midday, broad daylight
stunning?
 
a taste of blood in your porridge?
 
a thousand thoughtsworth of silence
in a standing wave
 
that, simply, your heart can't, won't,
argue away?
 
what?
 
salt on the tip of your soul?

Angela Arnold (she/her) lives in North Wales, UK, and is also an artist and a creative gardener. Her poems have appeared in print magazines, anthologies and online, in the UK and elsewhere. Her collection In|Between looks at ‘inner landscapes’ and relationships (Stairwell Books, 2023). She enjoys her synaesthesia and language/s and is currently learning Welsh.

by Nicola Frassetto 

An Infinity of Fungi 

White crescents at my fingertips;
button mushrooms, sliced and falling from my knife.
Firm and bald, like a baby’s scalp. 
In my hand, this knob of flesh,
fruited from centuries
of quiet libido. 

In teeming forest subways, close to the trunk, mycena
rise like typewriter keys, the livid orange of earwax.
Oyster mushrooms pout, shirred waists,
skirts curling in the wind.
Their cousins tilt upright
like Elizabethan standing ruffs. 

But underneath fungi as delicate 
as toenails, conceived in the warm fester
of someone else’s death, gods hide. 
They have escorted popes to their heavens, 
and against their million overlapping lives
death is fleeting. 

But my hands know the knife. We are united
in the purpose of consuming our way
to eternity. 

The mushrooms cook grey and small,
needing salt
and a little parsley.

in the sky/light

I grew up knowing that once
as a gift
someone had gentled the sky into their palms
and tucked it into the ceiling of my bathroom
as if it were the plush glow of a jellyfish. 

The bathroom was my grotto, and its blue walls
curled into breakers taller than I was, 
meeting at the opening way above where light came
like someone had taken the lid off a bottle
of moon; 

but at the floor light sifted down to darker blue
where the tiles were cool,
and sighed, and sank, a shoal of sleeping clams.

Scuttling things sorted the dust in far corners,
busy making little houses for themselves,
and high on a wall one leafy tentacle dangled from a pot -
the spongy body waited beneath. 
 
Light turned on the circle of the skylight, and fell 
in currents to settle like sand on everything 
below, and there was nothing that was not alive.
Yet with the doors closed,

all was still. 

Nicola Frassetto (she/her) is a student at the Queensland University of Technology, writing from Turrbal and Jagera land. She is obsessed with words, myths and butter, and her work has previously been published in lip magazine, Glass and ScratchThat. Her home on Instagram is @secretbeestungjournal. 

by Beth Clapton

sand bucket at my side
to extinguish sparks before dawn
smoke grit stings my eyes
and the last of the wine hisses
on the guttering flame

this time I will not drop to my knees
fan the embers to tease one more blaze
from the remains. I will not wrench
weatherboards from the house
or slats from the garden bench
I must let it die

come morning when a blackened
bewildered foot kicks
through heatless soot
remember me bewitched by white hot
and yellow tongues
dancing through the blaze.

Beth writes in fulfilment of a promise made to Mr. Cook at St Alphege Junior School in the 1970s. Beth’s poetry has won prizes in several Australian competitions and been published online and in print journals. Her love of words and trees can be found on Instagram @paperbarktales. Beth lives, works and dreams on Gadigal land. 

by John Robert Grogan 

I’d like to think it ends
curled up and dusty 
on lifetimes of memories,
an old snake in a washbasin,
behind the crusty half-used
forgotten paint tins
and the petrified hog- 
bristle brushes, overlooked
like the mildewy terracotta 
herb pots, stacked and lonely
as an unplanted seed
and the redback in her corner --
who kills everything she touches
— under the threatening smile 
of a bow-saw, beside the drunken
lean of a mattock with a cracked 
handle, the snake in brumation,
down the back shed.

John Robert Grogan (aka: JR) (He/Him) is an Irish-Australian poet based in Sydney, Australia. Life in country Ireland and his global wanderings have cultivated a curiosity and love for the natural world, and the connectivity of all things.

by Shaine Melrose

On the streets when I walk
                         two shadows fall
                                    my androgynous soul
                sprouts ambivalence from the core 
gender bender for sure
                                  wherever I walk
two shadows on the floor

I hang out with junkies
               drag queens and dykes
                             hookers and outcasts
                                              punks in the night.

I never stay long, always on the run
                                   from searing pain, old scars,
                                             words jangled in the thrum.
Looking for answers, lost in the wind
                        searching for love, no one will give.

            On the streets when I walk,

                              hey poofter, punk, you dyke!
                                                        we’ll catch you, we’ll cut you,
                                           nail your soul to a wall...
into a dark pool of blood
                      my two shadows fall –  
  
but I rise and I swipe            my light from their hands
                        I yell         I run                          and I roar.
             I am what I am
                          Fuck you all.

Shaine Melrose is a queer poet and gardener living with chronic illness, on Kaurna country. Recently her debut short manuscript, shooting words from my soul, won a place in FSP’s anthology ‘New Poets #23’. She has been shortlisted for the 2022 Judith Wright Poetry prize and published in APJ12.1, Saltbush Review, Bramble and Cordite.

by Mike Russell 

Crisp and Delicious

Fish and chips would sound like the ocean.
Like the crashing waves against the Shorncliffe pier. 
It would sound like fishermen hauling up their prizes.
Like farmers digging up potatoes and peeling them.
Fish and chips would sound crisp and delicious.
Like deep-friers bubbling away at my lunch.
It would sound like the saltiest dream you'd ever had.
Like a smile curling on my face.
My favourite food would taste like freedom.
And it would taste like community.
Like being with my best friends. And they're laughing.
And it sounds like the most delicious food on earth.

My Body in Water 

The water is glistening in the sun.
The boats ride it with smooth gliding motion that saves the people from falling into its depths. 
In the water there is life, there is death, there is beauty of bubbling manta rays and sharks and fish
and gone are the noises of the streets, the houses, the people, the cities.
The water is a cocoon of silence when I lie beneath its surface.
The water is my cocoon of safety and security of body held tight and mind held quiet.
My body is under the surface of your wetness and cool follies.
I'm held,
I'm caressed,
I'm tempted
by the peace I feel to stay forever.
My mind loves quiet.
My body loves being held in pressures of calm.
My good feelings of peace and tranquility
are held in you.
I'm going to find my body in water.

Mike Russell, poet and playwright, lives with Autism. Founding member of Brotherhood of the Wordless, he has worked with his mates to produce books, plays and performances. Mike expresses his craft by typing on a qwerty board with a facilitator. Mike has also performed at Queensland Poetry Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Volta, and Woodford Folk Festival. He has led workshops for Ruckusfest and Kelvin Grove College. Mike is currently editing his latest poetry collection, About a Boy.

by Anna Roscoe 

the hive has relocated 
itself again
i’m used to it by now 
the swarming weight 
near my heart
and anyway, the cloud 
is still, sluggish 
from the chill
no need to worry
i can just reach a hand 
into that dull buzz
move it all from sight 
once more
in crawling handfuls
carefully, gingerly
i keep them for the honey
but you shouldn’t
get too close
if one memory starts 
to sting 
then the rest will soon follow
​
Anna Roscoe's work appears or is forthcoming in Going Down Swinging, swim meet lit mag, and Aniko Press. Her writing often uses natural elements to explore emotions and memories. She grew up in Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung country, but now lives in Asia. 

by Javier Bateman
After Milo and Ocean Vuong

You are a plate scraped clean.
Dog-eared, folded,
a ‘come back to me later—please’ sorta guy.
He runs his thumb across your back
like it is some small thing, like it is
nothing at all.
Your mouth opens like a wound
 
He says,
all smooth and terrible,
‘I am Abel and my brother is Cain.’
And for a moment you can misremember
his hand in your hair,
the rock orbiting your skull,
and how the night overhead
was punctured by the white teeth of starlight.

Javier Bateman (They/He) is a queer, chronically ill, trans-nonbinary academic and poet living on unceded Whadjuk Nyungar Boodjar. Javier's poetry deals with diverse themes of grief, gender and gender identity, love, obsession and occasionally, Keanu Reeves. In his downtime, Javier is often found at home consuming media about sad cowboys.