Poems Special Issue 46

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the screeching of anarchic cats, a child crying, a voice from somewhere could be of pleasure or anguish. At dawn, exhausted fences lean inwards, over palings where fruit-tree branches hang, dry thickskinned lemons, sun-hardened, bird-picked. Wind gusts drift papers and grit into corners. On a back step, a pot of scarlet bougainvillea-the pavement gives way to soft purple flowers of clover their intimacy of a naked inner wrist exposed by a dressing-gown sleeve pushed back from wet soapsuds in a sink: back in alleys there's a thrumming, like heartbeatsit thuds and blossoms and roars.

TEXT, 2018

On the next instance of the New South Whales making an appearance in the assignment, she hesitated, then typed out a pithy question. Because a third mention surely deserved sarcasm. She tapped it out two-fingered on her laptop. 'Are these related to the Southern Right Whale?' Was she undermining the student's self-esteem by pointing out he didn't know how to smell the name of his home state? More to the point, had she been teaching too long? It was supposed to be a heart and soul job, a vacation like being a nun. She wanted to do the right thing but increasingly felt she was losing the plot and not just of the students' convoluted assignments. It was like an illness, this feeling stalking her. The bus lurched to a stop and she was jostled by the outflow of passengers spelling of body odour and expensive perfumes and daily grind. She stared blankly at the swelling cityscape beyond the window. Sighed. Not her stop. Dropped her eyes back to the coldface. The hall was deserted. She sometimes doubted students existed in threedimensional space. The laminated A4 on the Professor's door announced Consolation times, handily colour coded on a timetable. No one had introduced him to the vagaries of autocorrect, nor his students to the futility of expecting anything soothing when they came to consult behind that particular door. She arrived just in time, a skerrick before the nick, in a case of hurrying up to get somewhere to sit still. The school meeting dragged, its soul-purpose, it seemed, to prepare them for hell. The diminutive sessional tutor alone did not partake of the neatly triangular sandwiches and cut fruit provided as incentive to get them there. This woman had long subsided on next-to-nothing at all. As the clock on the far wall itched its way closer to the advertised conclusion, she found herself drowning. She woke as her chin hit her chest. 'I meant drowsing,' she apologised. The Head droned on, having made a slightly more complex spelling mistake: perusing agenda items took so much longer than pursuing them. The list of mistakes in the afternoon marking grew. The baddie had another think coming. A ballerina was frilled when she won the Eisteddfod. Some boys went surging. The versus of a song were eluded to.

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TEXT, 2021

TEXT, 2012

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Poetry and prose by Thom Conroy, Aaron Chapman, Andrew Leggett

1987

A VOTIVE FOR EMERSON Auroras flicker like the soul of a city rising From the wilderness beyond. I grew up in the east, Manhattans from the sky at night, a circuit board of lights. The aberrant loveliness of human effort. Not the single farmhouse, one road to town, But the complications of cloverleaf and staircase. Some nights, into a sky blank as philosophy's, The moon rises full and clear. On such a night, I saw you Wander out of Madison Towers dressed in your green coveralls, "Emerson" embroidered over your heart. Walking to your car, you felt the weight of the moonlight, And turned to see it-a pearl in the blue-black sky, And when you turned back to the car, your hand Had broken into a million shadows, and you felt The planet moving, skyscrapers like cardboard, And you remembered a former time, another life, And your lips formed a shape, And you touched the gleaming door handle And you opened the door.

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Creative works by Dominique Hecq, Rachel Hennessy, Lynn Davidson, Toni Roberts, Jane Downing, Craig Jordan-Baker

2014

Little smirched clouds. Should we be more Scared. The placement of houses. Neat Organ-like. Patterns. A lopsided lake In a wide circle enclosed. An even a greater lake Somewhere. Water is brown. An everything shadow Listening. I don't. So still. So Much more planet. Patterns. Now of trees. Parking Lots. Drainages. Pools. An rooftops Would defy it. Tennis courts. A purposeful clump. Trees. Dirt An asphalt. Pitcher's mounds. An cars flowing agreeably in every Possible direction. Or wishing it was over. The little pipes An bumps. Criss-crossing. Ours The subtle haze trap. An a whiff of runoff. Our hidden Indifference to flight plan. What could be. More Carefully stupid.

Text: Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs, 2017

Clio met Tomas one night at a gathering at Max's place. [1] She had recently returned to Brisbane when she ran into Max, an old acquaintance. Clio told him she was looking for a place to stay. He offered her the tiny flat above his in West End, a bohemian part of town where artists and other outsiders hung outside cafes and smoked cigarettes. She moved in immediately, lined up a job at a small college in the city, and lived each day without much thought for the future. Clio was ensconced in the kitchen talking to a woman who was older, and sharp witted with long, black hair pulled tight into a bun on top of her head. She told Clio that while she was in administration, her passion was for the arts; she had a show coming up at Soapbox, a gallery in the centre of town. 'Oh,' said Clio with raised eyebrows. The woman's eyes shone. Her glasses were enormous and had thick black rims. Her dangling earrings swung violently. She was becoming more excited as she explained her concept. It involved knitted animals. Clio imagined woolen bunnies or lambs with sagging ears, spread across a white gallery floor. The woman said: 'What do you do?' Clio paused. 'I'm a teacher.' 'Oh-what do you teach?' 'English. As a second language.' 'Do you enjoy it?' 'It has its moments.' The woman smiled. They both sipped their wine. Clio added that she liked to play the piano and write poetry in her spare time before the conversation steered back to the woman's show. The words washed over Clio like waves. She was being eroded, whittled down, nullified. She didn't know much at all about art when it came down to it, and this fact bothered her for reasons she didn't yet fully understand. Max, who was busy being the host, was the only person Clio knew. She tapped a fingernail on her glass. 'It's undervalued,'said the woman, whose eyes glowed brighter, in a half-crazed sort of way. Clio laughed along. She thought she detected sarcasm, but couldn't be sure. 'Knitting is a forsaken art! A part of the fabric of womankind!' In the stark kitchen light, Clio saw a face reflected in the woman's glasses. The same face peered out of each lens. For a moment, she didn't know who it was. Then she recognized herself-her dyed blonde hair, her eager eyes. [2] Tomas waltzed past the doorway behind them. Clio saw him. He was gorgeous: frothy black hair, a rash of stubble, a dangling cigarette. He swaggered rather than walked.