by Zoe Parsons 

Octopi Stimuli  

That’s how it goes: 
tentacles spread and tendrils latch. 
It ebbs and flows. 
Chemical emotion but it’s all  
from within, poison hatches. 

Frills and spots, adornments of every kind.
Facades and warning signs etched  
into evolution. Our amazing 
animal minds glide  
through an underwater galaxy. 
I find peace in the metaphor 
and sit here for a beat. 

Imagine having more sense: 
the world emanates, kaleidoscopic vision
ecstatic, muffled sound and explosions
of touch. Nerves, receptors, cells explain away
dips and curves, 
the boiling bubbling 
spew.

Coral Wind Chimes

​Broken coral wind 
chimes chatter 
as they wash ashore 
function served: crumbling
foundations—graveyard
or beach. The walking  
hurts, bare feet  
bristle against earth 
when calcite pierces  
skin, nails drag  
along the blackboard. 
Our teacher writes  
lessons but we don’t
listen. Claws scratch 
at an urgent itch. 
The washed-up 
coral is high  
pitched. Wind whispers, 
waves crumple 
and chimes clink, 
urgently scrawling 
on the blackboard.

Zoe (she/her) studies literature, philosophy, ecology and climate science in Naarm/Melbourne. She scrawls poetry on bits of paper and lives for adventures in nature. Zoe has been published by We Are Explorers, Lots Wife, Anaerkillik and Kos Magazine, as well as on her personal blog. Her Instagram is zoe.parsons. 

by Vanessa Rose

The pumpkin looms above the clivia
up and over our fence, rooted in soil 
that has bloomed a thousand bongs. 
I should push it back, gather up 
its desiccating leaves, its winding vine, 
and bundle it along the top of the palings 
as evidence of the neighbour’s transgression. 
But then I might miss the moment - 
the inevitable gravity of gourd. 
It falls without me seeing it, thudding 
at night into the ground 
irrigated by federation houses. 
Months later, I find it under the glossy straps 
of the clivia, at the tail-end of a dog
rooting out a blue tongue. 
Pumpkin, grey-worn and wilted, 
what dreams did you seed in your last 
days, hidden from the sun? 

Vanessa Rose writes poetry whenever she can. She is a member of Writing NSW and is currently undertaking a poetry feedback course in Sydney Australia. When not writing, Vanessa is a researcher at a not-for-profit social purpose centre based in Australia, Singapore and the UK.

by Joanne Fong

Start with the runt, his shrill 
shrieks sweep out over a cruel
land, where a midnight sun 
never sets on entrails, stains
the ice luminous red 

Slice into the heat of his belly
               —a fish, ready
to be gutted. 

Hack at limbs til you reach
bone, soon you will have ragged cuts 
of meat, poor imitations of sliced 
sections hanging from hooks 
in butcher’s windows back home.

Flinch when someone nicks
the bowels, putrid fumes leak 
               out like a tyre puncture. 

Once you burn those hunks 
of flesh til taste turns sour, season  
with stale salt from gritty palms.
Almost forget nights spent 
under the endless sun, his pulse 
lulling you to sleep, fingers woven 
deep in shaggy comforts of fur.

Joanne Fong is an emerging writer, creator and functional human. She is a journalist at KOS Magazine and is based in Melbourne. Find her on Instagram @joannefwrites

by Linda Albertson 

Her smile reaches me before I hear her footsteps -
I pull her on like a dressing gown, keep

her smile in the pocket. Smiley-face yellow 
is her favourite colour. 

When she is sad, the skin on her face glows
blonde like a full moon behind cloud. The imprint

of her three-year-old body still lies
warm on my mattress. The wonder is this – 

what I love about her 
I don’t recognise in myself.

Linda Albertson lives and writes on Yuin Country. Her poems have been published in Ginninderra Press anthologies. Her chapbook, Overdue, was published in 2016. @sip_a_poem

by Ren Kato 

I reside in this room
of darkness
Trepidations
tap dance around me
It feels like
my soul is a carcass
and my mind is the vulture

Longing to listen to your music
I can’t recall
the day I started to decay
I have even forgotten
what country I’m in
Perhaps it’s been too long
since I’ve seen the sky

Ren Kato is from Brisbane. He recently published his first poetry collection Reflected Fractures. Instagram: ren_kato_poetry

by Rory Hawkins

It coughs, spits, flumes
light in all directions.
Audio cracks, the screen
blooms hot white.
 
Dial it all down and blink
like mad till the retinal imprint
fades. How do I stay in focus?
 
Eyes and lense adjust
to find an answer: open rum
bottle in favoured hand, left
forms a red ball of light.
 
Billowing smoke, blushing
sand—pink as lips, cheeks,
fingers, and toes. You hold
the flare like everything else:
 
at arm’s length. Tiny
crabs sprinkle at your feet,
chasing tiny shadows.
​
Rory Hawkins is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based writer. Find more of his prose in ScratchThat magazine issues 4 & 5, the upcoming issue of Inkblot and through his Instagram @rory_writes_sometimes

by Leila Lois

​’...the very springs, the very orchards here were calling for you.’ 
-Virgil's Eclogues, Part I

Amaryllis lean to sun, burst
stars of sparkling pink,
crimson veins; blood

upon marble. Naked ladies
with glossy stems, bright
and bare, sit aflame

in the orangery, sweet,
citrus jasmine scent of mock
-orange on the wind.

In a vat, I could squeeze
petals for days, only
to extract a tiny drop

press it on my wrists
and behind my ears or drip
amaryllis oil into my eyes,

dilate pupils like night
stretches across sky, unfolds
its dark shroud, my crimson gown.

I could see you everywhere;
sundial shadow, moving swing,
a fallen book, broken spine on red tiles

An underground spring bled
up through stone, leaked into cold
-room where we stored meat.

By the wall, yew, dark lover,
above where pets were archived
in tiny plots: Tabby, Ginger, Lulu.

Lilies all weighed down,
turned away. Life is an empty
urn without you.

Leila Lois is a dancer and writer of Kurdish and Celtic heritage who has lived most of her life in Aotearoa, based now in Naarm/ Melbourne. In her poems, Leila explores a personal sense of origin that, like the ocean, binds several landscapes and times, coming back to the idea that a timeless, boundless love pervades. Her publishing history includes Southerly Journal, Djed Press, NoD Literary Journal, Next in Colour, Lite Lit One, Bent Street Journal and Delving into Dance.

by Kye Lay

Blue bottles
Washing up
A shore assures
The message inside
To be thrown again
Into the abyss

Kye Lay is a meanjin based multi-media artist @klaypoetery + Kye Lay on youtube

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.

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.