K A Nelson Post #1 or why I was busy in January . . .

Things I couldn't throw into the skip

Their wedding telegrams
His scout's badge and jamboree songbook
Her Girls Own Almanac, 1938

Their bedroom barometer
     (red and green arrows missing)
His framed business registration
Her workplace training program:
     (Transactional Analysis for Managers, Footwear Department)

Their mortgage discharge papers
His first pilots' licence
Her golf clubs

Their Morris Oxford Owners Manual
His plastic sandals
     (for fishing Burrendong)
Her easels, paints and brushes

His father's cutthroat razor and strop
Her book of Scottish psalms
The receipt for their burial plots

Peter Boyle #4 Responding to Chrysogonus #1 After the attack

Responding to Chrysogonus #1 After the attack

Rows of pews

gather in their emptiness

before a white spiral

reaching towards light

Shafts of shadow

dividing the stillness

may also be prayer

No head to speak,

no arms to enfold,

yet something enormous holds us.

We come to rest in this place

drawn to the strength that pulses here

after the attack.

Kit Kelen #10 - dementia ward (after Kevin's 'Kangaroo')

dementia ward

after Kevin's kangaroo

https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2017/12/kevin-brophy-1-kangaroo.html

a mystery to keep arriving

to nuzzle breath warm from the blue

year days old in the image

a swivel of ears

and tilt to true

all this by heart

I won't look

it's like the code

for where mum's at

old as the hills

and soon forgot

made new every day

and all of this by heart

Chrysogonus #1 - after the attack

the headless virgin
deep in prayer
for her dead attacker

sembah bekti kaaturaken 
tumraping sucining ruh
jisim pundi kedah pun dongani? 

demi bidadari
ia tertunduk mati
di depan sang dewi


This morning (11/02), St. Lidwina Church in Yogyakarta, Indonesia was attacked by a man carrying a sword during a mass. Before he was shot to death, the man managed to injure the priest and several people.

I happened to frequent this church back when I was still living in Indonesia. The priest, who is now in coma, was my teacher in elementary school.  

Dominique Hecq #6 – The smell of mothballs – response to Judy Johnson’s ‘Between a moth and a butterfly’

The smell of mothballs

a moth is an omen
of the third dark

the first dark
was the dark of storm

when it broke
we were safe inside

the second dark
was the dark of night

after the rain
the stars were bright

and already the moon
in its last quarter

Dominique Hecq #5 – Et toi le, six lances – wild response to Beatrice Machet’s ‘Silenceweb’ answering Magdalena Ball’s poem in response to Angela Gardner

Et toi le, six lances

shines
in every reflection
beyond the factifications
of logocentric
economies and (…)

The asymmetry
of living being
lost in perspectives
unnecessary for perceiving

Sounds of signing fill
your breathing

Blood pools
in your ears

Ali Jane Smith - The Mantid on Crown Street

after reading Magdalena Ball #5 Kindly Note in response to Andrew Burke’s #2 Dear Beneficiary 

i think the mantid was already in trouble

and my attempts to help didn’t make things very much worse

I’d already had a few encounters with spiders

real and bourgeois that weekend

cockroaches i’ve dealt with elsewhere

but the mantid, dead by now you’d think

is stickier, my feeling for it not the fondness

i have for ladybirds or ants of a certain size

but tiny hooks of obligation, maybe its the face

like a Hollywood alien

it’s deflating to fail in an attempt at rescue

I was looking forward to carrying it

carefully, on the matt side of a postcard

toward that tree i always think i’ll photograph

Magdalena Ball #9 Bird Too Late in response to Cui Yuwei #5 Notes in Melbourne

Bird too late 

in response to Cui Yuwei #5 Notes in Melbourne

I knew where I was

conflicting phonemes

swollen feet

elementary particles

violer d’amores

the quiet darkenings

sobriety on a country road

in this world

I’ll always be stranger

path lit by starlight, by night

embrace the empty

and let you go

I knew what I needed

falling away

a fall awake

every road leads to

abandoned lines

Nathan Curnow #2 I Peed in The Float Tank

after Ed Wright's Float Tank

I peed in the float tank 

to whale song, let it migrate 

all around, as I did in the womb

to Peter, Paul and Mary—the only record

my parents' owned. Something salty, 

seasoned and recycled is never far away. 

It’s unsaid but expected, we’re meant to 

relax, it’s factored into the price of entry. 

I opened the hatch and they sung me in

to that dull repetition of self. It looped— 

don’t panic!—it’s the done deal. Fear

the one who climbs out still frazzled.

So I truly escaped, weightless, guiltless, 

beyond the rituals I was born into. I peed 

and the whales just kept on returning. 

Folk’s dead, despite the comeback of vinyl.

"Floored" first post. Response to Peter Boyle#3 "I'm Translating the Floor"

"Floored"
My flung arm hits a barrel
It rocks- it's cardboard- spills out red and blue silver
wrapped chocolate balls, their shock of colour and glitter
shine and roll around, as my weight-ball head,
falls gravely on the floor.

My legs are airy, only my bending knee
can land, graze what's hard.
The shop assistant's thought is an ambulance.
My arm and knee hurt
I test them, bruised not broken, even the chocolates
are not crushed, just scattered.
Like drops of water that keep on running
in rain on glass,
the hollow balls pop up against each other,float before falling.

I'm lifted to my feet by others.
In this after-time of the before-then
the only resolution
is random, colour and glitter.

Ali Jane Smith - We missed the kangaroo

after reading Cui Yuwei #3 ‘A Mid-Autumn Dream’ in Response to Tricia Dearborn's First Post and Cui Yuwei #2-A Translation of Kevin Brophy’s ‘Kangaroo’

 at noon, at two.

At twelve we missed the moon.

We had plenty to do, comings and goings. 

We read, wrote, washed dishes

well, not washed them.

Packed the dishwasher

unpacked it

at noon, again at at two.

Passersby didn’t stop

and I think I mentioned

we missed the kangaroo. 

Ate an almost perfect pear

replied, redirected, sighed

and dreamed we hopped.