LAKE MOON by Murray Jennings

(from the novel ‘All Our Christmases’)

I have no idea what bird that is which scuds,

a silhouette along the silver-pink surface.

You need to hear a call, but it’s nearly night

and they don’t.

It’s not quite a lake, although there’s been more rain.

The frogs sound resigned to the season change,

the grasses, reeds and marshes

are fed again by the winter creek

from the foothills

where cashed-up people spend the weekends

scraping barnacles from boats

and vacuuming driveways.

Across the water, distant shadows are absorbed

and suburban lights flick on for the News.

I have no boat, no house, no complaints.

For me, nothing taints this swamp

this winter silence

an old bed

a shed roof almost leakproof

a lake moon

rates to pay soon.

PS: The novel is for sale at Crow Books and New Edition

OUT THERE by Colin Young

Out there ground imprisoned by drought

longs to escape in rain. Tussocks of spinifex

inject the sky through needles.

The law of agony has sentenced

the thorny devil to wander its scorching hell.

Look over the nearest rocks and watch the sun

gloat over ants’ nests trying to reach the clouds.

Why bother to expel breath here? Better to conserve

every drop of sweat for the long haul,

for the trudge over dune-oceans, and twisted logs

sunk to the bottom of a lost water-hole.

And that dingo hobbles, hesitant,

toward nowhere, fur ruffled by hints

of wind, teeth drooling for food,

without finding a companion anywhere.

 

PEACH by Jan Napier

Peach

Peach pits are poisonous This is not a mistake.

Brenna Twohy.

we eat of life as if a ripened peach.

I wipe my chin, protest that I have had little

of this though on the cracked blue and white

plate only a single slice remains.

look, you nod. can mirrors have intruders?

hair is hoarfrost, face a windfall, hands aftershocks.

the sun is low. there are clouds. shivering begins.

on kitchen china, discarded skin, that last piece.

it is late, you say, for sweetness. crush the kernel.

tell the secret of the seed as you leave me.

head in hands. the pause between seconds.

I open my throat.

plate only a single slice remains.

THIS COULD BE ENOUGH - Gail Willems

I’m a catabolic woman

Stimulating

Dangerous

I want a slow    hand

across my sagging    breasts

spiralling    nipples

tummy rolls    thighs    love handles

a wet tongue that adores

the many craters of my hot     skin

me vivid with    desire

shouting

nonsense as lust unravels

This landscape 

sticky with you

won’t be enough

Years later

maybe sooner

Reality sneaks in

This could be enough

ABALONE FISHING

 

ABOLONE FISHING

 

John walked out

            on ankle-high surf

babbling on the reef

            finding its way

through the sharp rocky surface

 

I followed behind

            nervous in my old tennis shoes

walking gingerly

            tyre lever in hand

hunting for abalone.

 

John knows how. He’d been

            around the world

working on merchant ships

            telling tales of the high seas

and the low dives in port cities.

 

I’d been in boarding school

            for much of his travels,

anchored to declining verbs

            and translating Caesar.

He told us about the tough whores

            of Marseilles while I was

taking a Burmese girl from

            a Catholic boarding school

for a hamburger and coffee.

 

“Here you go, here’s some,”

            as he bent to the reef

hacking at stones  as

            the sun glittered off

the Indian Ocean.

 

 

 

-        17/08/2022

Herbie Hancock - Jazz Fusion Cantelope Island

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TRIBUTE TO PHIL HALL / CANADA

 periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics: Andrew Burke : TRIBUTE TO PHIL HALL (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com)