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. 

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.”

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

by Mike Russell 
after Luke Howard's song "Dappled Light"
 
Light is all                                   around me, breathe
it in and out.                              Touch it 
with a fingertip.                         Feel the grooves
of light speckle                          your forehead.
This is love                                 and lust and power.
Light is all                                   around us and it listens.
See if you can                            listen back to its pulse,
its shimmering                          gold. I see colours eat
me up but                                  there is no pain.
I am falling                                through the cosmos
and flying                                  through the sea.
I am found                                in this open space
and I am                                    free.  

Mike Russell is a non-verbal communicating poet with autism and PTSD. He is the leader of Brotherhood of the Wordless, a talented group of likeminded individuals with similar conditions. Mike likes to write and slam his poetry across Meanjin, Australia.