Tag: poetry
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She Named the Stars Out Loud
We pulled off somewherepast the edge of signal,dust curling like smokebehind the tyres. She climbed the bonnet barefoot,leaned back with a bottle of waterand a grinlike she’d stolen it from a god. Said she used to bean astrologer.Said Orion was her first crushand she still wrote him letterswhen it rained. I told her I didn’t…
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Shaping a Poem
It’s a quiet thing, a word foundin the stillness of dawnwhile dreamers slumberand the new moon succumbsto day. A fading thought,soft intake of breathin the long pause between sleep and wake.Sometimes it’s hopeenduring wildfire, flood,or the dusts of time.Maybe dinosaur bones,a lost tomb, or scarecrowsguarding lavender fields. Perhaps a dew-drizzledcobweb, a jonquil, cloudor song. Most…
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Daughter of the Plains
Ochre soaked skies, sunrise woke her – blue grass seas lilt behind stained glass at dawn. On morning’s grace she’s borne. Ryan Stone
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From the Sidelines
Do you know how it feels to stand alone in a forest in the caesura of a gathering storm? With a graceful pirouette the north wind about-faces and just as quickly a sou’ wester replaces the breathy, dry kisses of long afternoons in the sun. Drawing breath from your lungs and heat from your soles,…
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Falling Up
You will never fall in love with me. Don’t try to convince me That I will always wait for you. If you really look, you’ll see I’m not here for the long haul Don’t imagine You give me reason to stay. When things get hard I’ll leave – Don’t imagine I’m not like the others,…
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The Weight of Lost Things
Set against the dry pulse of the Australian outback, these poems chart the fractured terrain of boyhood, brutality, young love, and the loyalty of dogs. Fathers vanish, mothers soften, dogs die, and the land never forgives. With language as lean as the paddocks it describes, this book explores what gets buried, what remains unspoken, and…
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Coal Town
Birds don’t stop in this town. I see them fly past, black peppering blue, going someplace. I’ve given up dreaming wings. This town will know my bones. Condoms sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile of those steel-eyed shrews who linger late after church.…
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Unburied Hatchet
Until I saw those wasted hands, brittle as chalk, I hadn’t thought how fast the years make ghosts. I heard them once called brawler’s paws. For me, they were always more: cobras, poised to strike. But his brawling days are gone now; I could kill him with a pillow, if I cared enough to try.…
