by Lucy Norton 

patrilineal

dreamt you were a poem 
i kept writing you
if i am alive it means
parts of you are still

dreamt you were an ocean
i kept being afraid of you
if i am alive it means
i am here to reunite
ghosts of lineage past

what would it mean for them 
to taste freedom? 
shackles look different
but i know yours because
they became mine
we both had pain to run from
you just got away first 

i am choosing to run towards
instead
create a new legacy
one you might’ve wanted
to inherit
to give to us

you were second last 
of your brothers 
to die
but the first 
to put up a fight

dreamt you were a story
i’ll keep writing you

her waters 

our rivers call me by names
i haven’t heard before
arms extending across
mouth and state and sea
gentle pull at my seams
gotta unravel to hear ‘em

ocean is loudest when 
i’m coastal can’t go 
anywhere without 
hearing her song

mama says when you 
become water you will sail 
sometimes i’m done fighting
to float feels like birthright 
i am a willing participant 
this is a devotion i belong to

Lucy Norton is a storyteller of Koori & Quechua heritage living on Gadigal land. Her work explores lived experience, and aims to navigate the complexities of relationality and memory. They're a recipient of the Varuna First Nations Fellowship 2023, Red Room Emerging Poet's Residency 2024 and their work has been published in kindling & sage, Sunder Journal and Right Now Magazine.

by Damien Becker

Jesus, late

of Mater Hospital South Brisbane
entrance, was carved with a chainsaw, 
hewn from the safety of bark casting

by steel cutter teeth, further detailed 
with a chisel, gouge and bent, then
sanded back to prayer. 

We love complaints! reads the poster 
on the wall behind the messiah
as opportunities to learn. 

Car lights exiting the underworld 
parking on their way to West End 
flash through the stained glass

of the empty chapel behind the vending machine
and those spirits are moving through 
and over me, my bald head the Sacré-Cœur

Montmartre disco ball on a Saturday night. 
I wander the pews, rest to hang myself 
over in service to oxygenation, in-patient

mirror of His attendant curve. We 
share air in the dry silence, neither 
with anything to say, His cheeks stained 

with rose wax, mine paled with deficiency, 
flow sapped. A revelation: I consider 
anointing my forehead with Coke Zero 

in supplication, but I am shy with 
total strangers and anyhow, my Father 
is calling me from Melbourne to talk footy. 
​
Damien Becker is a disabled writer and community development worker from Murwillumbah NSW on Bundjalung Country. An award-winning spoken word artist, his poetry has been published by Australian Poetry Journal, Verity La, Bramble Journal, and Sunder Journal, among others. He lives with cystic fibrosis and is a double-lung transplant recipient.

by Peter Viggers

That worm in the ear
those worms of the soil
 
elvis wiggling
down in the deep
 
radiant colours
like Joseph’s coat
 
sunk five fathoms
to a sunless hole
 
feeding on whalebones
back-biting each other
 
no shore for the leaving
no star to be seen
 
ten thousand mouths
a shimmer of song
 
a whale call vibrating
in the depths of my ear
 
collapsing the space
between them and us
 
a body of water
a body of bone
 
the distance of difference
the strangely same
 
wearing their gold
a jitterbug jive
 
the brilliance of pink
the glamour of glow.
 
Elvis having a whale
in heaven below.

Note: ​the fourth species’ shimmery pink and gold scales earned it the name P. elvisi, a tribute to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Peter Viggers gained an MA in Poetry (2016) from the University of Manchester; poems
shortlisted for the Bridport Competition, the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award and
Brian Dempsey Memorial Poetry Award; and published, amongst others, in Orbis, SMOKE,
Ink Sweat and Tears, Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology (2021).

by Lisa Zerkle

​Once I watched a snake encircle
the post of a picnic shelter,
spiraling towards a wren’s nest tucked under
the eave, not dissuaded by the shrieking
pair of swooping decoys or their frenetic
flailing as it breached their haven
atop the post, plenty of time
to consider how it would allow
each egg into its mouth, how each would shatter
into tasty slurry of slime and shell,
those brood-warm ovals cradled
in beak-woven straw, how—no rush--
it would swallow all but
only one by one.

Lisa Zerkle’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quartet, Heavy Feather Review, The Collagist, Nimrod, storySouth, among others. She was the creator and curator of 4X4CLT, a public art and poetry series for Charlotte Lit. In January 2023, she was awarded an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. She lives with her husband and a 100 pound slobbery bulldog named Ozzie. Follow her on Instagram @hag_lore

by Kris Spencer 

The April-wind kicks up, leaves are
all grown back on the maple. It sings
quieter than the sycamores that line
the street. Branches chafe and chirp as 
a squall comes in. When the rain stops,

we sit under its canopy. The light comes 
green through the new wood as the tree
drips. We pat and stroke the trunk, finely 
shaped and kinked halfway—like a dancer’s 
leg. In a hot spell last August, a jay slept 

in the shade of the branches, every afternoon 
for a week; a mirthy spot of blue, too big 
for the cats to bother. In the autumn, my wife 
raked the fallen leaves into three hessian bags. 
All neatly tied and stacked, they stayed 

by the shed all winter. Each sack, 
frost-haunched or soaked; sometimes lit 
by the pale circle of the sun. Today, 
we spread the dark mulch, enough 
for the flower-beds and the new saplings. 

My daughter tells me, in winter the tree
keeps the sun inside, like a cactus
keeps water. She lifts my arm so it rests 
on a low branch, where the feeder hangs; 
my son says, you are the tree now.

Kris has work published in journals in the UK, US, Eire, Europe, Australia, India and SE Asia. His debut collection, Life Drawing, was published in 2022 by Kelsay Books. His second collection, Contact Sheets, is due for publication early 2024. Also by Kelsay Books. 

after Pablo Neruda
by Tom Nutting

I like for you to be still:
it is as though you are here
close now we stop touching
your sky with kerosene cross-hatch
packages of freedom,
and it sounds like you speak in birdsong
we had forgotten in our parks — our daily
dose of clean air — who knew the city
could be so clear? It seems
as though you’ve returned, my soul,
to the spaces we reserved for you.
You are like the word: wild.

I like for you to be still
here and it seems as though you are
rejoicing: dolphins crystal Venetian canals,
elephants tea garden in Yunnan and
goats wander Llandudno town centre.
We laugh at the new kids in the playground
to hide our terror at ‘Nature reclaims!’ --
let us come out and play
your return through the night, lasting
like Attenborough behind electric
screens always (t)here: I like
for you to be as close
as my remote.

I like for you to be still:
it is as though you are
with that plastic bag choking
your whalesong. But one viral
video, then, one graph in Nature,
is enough. And I’m happy;
happy that it’s not true.

Tom Nutting (he/they) is a writer from Bristol, UK. He is a practising psychiatrist but also has an MA in English Literature. His work focusses on mental health and medical humanities, on gender and queerness, and on nature and climate. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry and short stories.

by Ian Irwin

crickets tap the air
thin as wire
flirting in code

a crowd shivers
in heat atmosphere
fraught

summer the length
of grief hums
with prayer

for the sake of shaking 
out bury me 
mad

& broken so I
won’t be late

Ian Irwin is a Bristol-based writer and educator. He is an Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poet and his poetry is published in Trasna and Poetry Pulpit anthology.

by Jacklyn Irwin

I climb on top of my huge,
strong friend,
a horse called ‘Cricket.’
He is warm 
and I can feel his body
moving and flexing
beneath me
under my legs.

I feel his power
but I am not afraid.
He carries me carefully
and steadily
along pathways in nature.

I love it
when it rains
softly on us both.
I feel connected
to the living energy
of the world.

Thank you, Cricket.
You give me joy.

Jacklyn Irwin was a non-speaking young woman who belonged to the Sunshine Coast Writer’s group and The Brotherhood of the Wordless. Her work has been published in anthologies of both groups as well as Prism, A collection of Contemporary International Poetry. Creative writing was a great passion of hers.

by ​Rida Zulfikar

/ sau- li- tiyude / 
[Noun]: a hitch in birdsong ; error in autumn 

“In silence, music / is heard louder, i press my / ears to my pulses” 

See also:
Reflection | egg splitting | drumbeat | weight of water in my eyes | 
|drumbeat | reflection traces waves in my hair |
| oh, drumbeat | 
|emotion and reason | drumbeat |
| I am split into two |
| alone || alone || alone||  

FAQs: 
1) the waves bring back dead corals; can I please go back home?
→ remember, foot crushing grass
→ remember, paper cutting clean through skin
→ remember, hands clutching each other alone

2) and so what does it take to break an orbit?
→ blood seeping on glass-threads
→ the cobweb succumbing to the brush
→ planet whizzing by, lost.

3) and so when does a reflection look back at you?
→ edge-cutting words, heavy words, words i dress myself up in
→ between lips, dead butterfly wings 
→ stars copy-pasted on to-do’s 

​Rida Zulfikar is a poet living in Chandigarh, India. She has been published in the Journal of Undiscovered Poets, InkPantry, Visual Verse and more, and has authored The First Few Tiles of The Road. She is also the editor-in-chief of Mollusk Literary Magazine- dedicated to empowering writers and poets.

​

by Rebecca Brown

We lounge under the duvet,
my limbs in yours,
making plans for the park.

I place sliced grapes
and bear-shaped crisps
under your expectant noses.

You tell me you love me 
so much,
over and over again.

We watch each other closely,
ready to worry at the first hint
of a tear falling.
 
I tidy the scattered puzzle pieces
and wide-eyed baby dolls,
muttering unconvincingly

as if I don’t love 
every second. 
If only I could express

these golden moments,
sweet and strong as honeycomb,
are as good as it gets.

Rebecca Brown (she/her) is a disabled mother with incurable breast cancer. She started writing when the hospice gave her a gratitude journal. Once she started, she could not stop! She shares her experience growing up disabled and living with cancer.  Rebecca has had poems published in Wishbone Words and Recesses.