by Stephanie Powell 

From the sea of the backyard you emerge and look as though you’re in need of watering. 

We are beneath the sky, a Filipino-swatch blue, a light paste of trout-shaped clouds. 

The air is dry and the bush-figs are dropping.

In a different version of this afternoon, I’d pick you up as though you were the child and ask,
what are gardens to old men? 
You would say something like, something to be tender to, something to work on. Then get back to work. It would be the answer I am expecting, though I’m not convinced that it belongs to you. 

With the price of petrol, semi-retirement-
there is more time spent walking in circles with the hose, making space for paving stones. The city muted, on upturned glass-roots at the end of the street.

Breakfast is coffee, newspaper ink, two slices of toast. Magpies warbling like heavy smokers
in the trees. You grow things to the taste of bees, with your gentle, gentleman hands. 

What a proud man-
to have seen him off to work in the morning, igniting the sensor lights in the driveway at the end
of the day. A few games of online solitaire played before bed. Unwinding in the already unwind
-ed night.

There you go again chasing the birds off the new grass seed. Your new ways of working- 
hands waving, madcap under the Jacarandas. 

Stephanie Powell grew up in Melbourne, Australia. She has spent the last few years living in London (with some short stints in Canada and Kenya). She writes and takes photos. Her collection Bone was published by Halas Press in July 2021. Her work has also appeared in Ambit Magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Dawntreader, Dream Catcher, Spelt Magazine and Sunday Mornings at the River.

by Jackson ​Machado-Nunes

sits hugged by a rope
in the waters of Mo’orea
French Polynesia
within the pitchless hum
of the ocean
she is the largest coral
i adopted
a blushing savannah brown
a colour you surely
would have worn.

we all have different ways 
of keeping you alive
some of us still mourn you
some light a candle for you
around your birthday
and Christmas
and the anniversary
of your death
some of us 
probably avoid thinking of you
altogether
attempting to move on
in a way
as swiftly as it seemed you left.

i never cried
i never attended your funeral
over zoom
but my views on death
after all
are a little alt-left
but what i did know
was that coral gives our planet 
half of our oxygen
so i bought Earth a coral
named it after you
i felt it only fitting
as on many occasions
we were forced to steal extra breaths
because our language together
was laughter.

Jackson is a Meanjin based non-binary poet with a passion for Mother Earth, and a mission to see queer representation become commonplace in Australia. They’re currently studying a BFA at QUT, where they were a co-chairperson of the QUT Literary Salon. Find their work on Instagram @deku.eku

by Jane Downing 

The brain is not something to save
It’s hooked out through the nose
Thrown away
So why listen to it whispering
            why would he lie to you
            believe him             do
 
The guts, now there’s another thing
Eviscerate and scoop and jar
And put on a shelf for the ever-afterlife
Balance the jackal head on the stomach
Stopper up the gut’s shout
            it’s all wrong
           don’t believe him
Stick the beaky falcon on the jar with the intestines
            let them turn alone in queasy pain
Lungs that cannot breathe when they hear the lies
            stick them in an alabaster jar
            make a fat-bellied baboon of them
Stay lily-livered
Cut out that organ and give it a human face
            lidded with serene green-glazed eyes
 
Let this civil war end
Because the heart, the heart
            is left in the body even after death
There is no canopic jar to hold it
There is no hook to extrude the bloody mess
It is left in the chest
It is left gasping
            love, love, love

Jane Downing lives and writes on Wiradjuri land. Her poetry has appeared in journals around Australia including Meanjin, Cordite, Rabbit, Canberra Times, Bluepepper, Not Very Quiet, Social Alternatives, and Best Australian Poems (2004 & 2015). Her first collection, ‘When Figs Fly’ (Close-Up Books) was published in 2019. She can be found at janedowning.wordpress.com

by April Bradford

I inhale the sticky air.
A kookaburra laughs at me.
Memories rattle, erasing
the good. Backhanded
             words weave cobwebs
                of honeydew resin
           around my ribs,
    cinched with dew drops.
Viridian wasteland,
no shelter nestled
beneath skeletal limbs.
Sink into nature’s ­comfort
until the undergrowth bites.
Ingest sunlight, sweat and green
             ants. Crushed  
lemon crawls on my tongue.
I wake to laughter.

April Bradford (she/her) is a UQ Creative Writing graduate. She works as an intern editor at Hunter Publishing and freelances on the side. Her writing currently features in the Toronto zine, Sapphic. Her irregularly updated Instagram is @april_elisabet.

by Megan Cartwright

Do you ever catch a half-formed image
fluttering at the edge of sight or sleep?
A fragile thing that you might have imagined
if not for the metallic dust left on your skin.
 
My grandmother's handwriting.
I recall arthritic Cs - but they are from later.
In this memory I am only twenty and
she is nimbly formed cursive.

She breaks macadamia shells open with a rock.
Her bare hands are not made of tissue paper and
she is laughing and feasting.
We spend an afternoon in sunshine and retire for sandwiches.

Later, she makes cocoa on the stovetop,
even though it’s summer and too hot for comfort.
We pull husks from beneath our fingernails
and marvel at the simplicity of the day.

Megan Cartwright (she/her) is an Australian writer and teacher. Her poetry has been published in October Hill Magazine, Authora Australis, and Oddball Magazine. Recently, Megan was awarded a highly commended accolade by the Independent Writers Group of NSW for her entry in the Pop-Up Art Space competition ‘Haiku – Capturing a Moment’.

by Claire Fitzpatrick 
CW: alcoholism, trauma, family violence

My mother had a broken
force field. When she drank
it would collapse
and her sadness would erupt
like spilt sugar –
not a few specs here and there
but enough to cover a whole table.

As a child, I thought it was normal
to cry and shout and break things
so I would cover my head with my pillow
and tell my younger sister to ignore
it as best she could.

I still think motherhood is spilt sugar.

Claire Fitzpatrick is an award-winning author of speculative fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is the 2020 recipient of the Rocky Wood Memorial scholarship fund for her non-fiction anthology ‘A Vindication Of Monsters – essays on Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft.' In her 'real-life' she works in a wholesale nursery and doesn't use her degree.

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