David Adès is the author of Mapping the World (Wakefield Press / Friendly Street Poets, 2008), the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal (Garron Publishing, 2015) and Afloat in Light (UWA Publishing, 2017).
Photograph: Anne Henshaw
Life is Elsewhere
~ Milan Kundera
else the universe removes its cloak of dark matter and reveals the strings of stars lying behind it
else the universe is not the universe at all but another and another
else the road taken is not one but many and the road not taken is multiples of many
else life is smoke and mirrors behind which other lives
else wind is a giant hand brushing away clouds of anger
else love is a prized toy, too easily discarded
else our eyes see and see nothing, we walk, oblivious, in quicksand
else story is whisper, horizon, clouds piling up and up
else nothing is truth except lies, told and untold,
where the volcano shifts and rumbles
where the girl hides inside herself, where the words are spoken into the air
where everything is forsaken for love
where expediency trumps morality, where politics outweighs compassion
where the wave of indifference is a tsunami
where the damaged and wounded walk invisibly among us
where everyone speaks and no one is heard
where denial subverts and distorts truth, where rationalisations deny accountability
where we cannot support the weight of our hypocrisy
where we fail to overcome the litany of our failures.
Richard James Allen is an Australian born poet whose writing has appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and online over many years. His latest volume of poetry, The short story of you and I, is published by UWA Publishing (uwap.com.au). Previous critically acclaimed books of poetry, fiction and performance texts include Fixing the Broken Nightingale (Flying Island Books), The Kamikaze Mind (Brandl & Schlesinger) and Thursday’s Fictions (Five Islands Press), shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. Former Artistic Director of the Poets Union Inc., and director of the inaugural Australian Poetry Festival, Richard also co-edited the landmark anthology, Performing the Unnameable: An Anthology of Australian Performance Texts (Currency Press/RealTime). Richard is well known for his innovative adaptations and interactions of poetry and other media, including collaborations with artists in dance, film, theatre, music and a range of new media platforms.
In the 24-hour glow
It is less than 24 hours since we first made love.
Every moment fading in slow motion, like a sunset, watched from
a public housing park bench, 24 years from now.
People are flawed stories that unfurl as perfect wisdoms.
We think our profundity ends with sex,
but it only begins there.
Maybe between longing and belonging we can be happy with something else.
Strangeness.
Where coincidence becomes grace.
Nadja Fernandes is a Brazilian-born writer who has been living in Perth for 15 years. She mainly writes fiction but has recently got involved in a non-fiction project, contributing with two stories that will be part of a book about different people living with a disability (for more information, visit www.my-dis-abilities.com ). Nadja is strongly influenced by the ideas and the writings of Virginia Woolf, Patricia Highsmith, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel García Marquez, Julio Cortazar, and Machado de Assis, to name a few. She is an English and Spanish teacher, translator and writer, and lives with her ten-year-old daughter.
Cenizas
Cenizas That grey weightless substance That descends as its sister ascends Rising elusively Like manipulative thoughts although not delusive
Cenizas That grey residue left from your fuel No quieres renunciar No puedes a ella dejar So when up la hermana goes You invite her, through your nose She’s grey but she’s hot Venenosa, but somehow soft
When you’d finish with the vice And get rid of all that dottle I’d be told to clean your pipe You’d be sipping from the bottle
Foggy residues, cenizas, In the chamber. ‘Date prisa!’ Would call out Señor Urquiza, Foggy residues, cenizas, Latin words during the Misa
Your self-standing cenicero, at which I often stared Made of granite and so rare Would stare back at me and you In the centre of your room With those notches, con sus muescas.
Those were eyes that never slept Those were eyes that always watched Ojos que jamás guiñan, ojos que todo ven
Thirty years have gone by Y hoy vuelvo al Uruguay Tomo mate, I still do It’s my favourite drink, my fuel Like the pipa was to you.
We all asked for you to quit We all prayed or begged or hoped That you’d want to be more fit But you didn’t change a bit
“In nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti”. I make the sign of the cross Yet I still feel sad and empty
In the centre of my room In an odd way giving peace Stands my new granite piece
This one has all its eyes shut Ojos que ya no se abren Ojos que siempre duermen. a no miran ni registran. Adentro, solo restan, tus cenizas.
Notes
1.Cenizas = ashes 2. No quieres renunciar = You don’t want to give it up 3. No puedes a ella dejar = You cannot leave “her”. In Spanish the word “pipa” (which means pipe) is feminine, which is why the pronoun used is ‘ella’, which means ‘she/her’ 4. La hermana = the sister 5. Venenonsa = venemous 6. Date prisa = Hurry up 7. Señor Urquiza = Mr. Urquiza 8. Missa = Mass Service 9. cenizero = ashtray 10. Con sus muescas = with its notches 11. Ojos que jamas guiñan = Eyes that never blink 12. Ojos que todo ven = Eyes that see all things 13. Y hoy vuelvo al Uruguay = And today I return to Uruguay 14. Tomo el mate = I drink “mate” (“mate” is a traditional drink made by an infusion of dried leaves of the ‘yerba mate’. It is widely consumed in some countries of South America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. This drink is traditionally prepared in a hollowed gourd, to which a metal straw with a slightly curved end is added so that it can be sipped. I intend to make a brief analogy between the image of the ‘mate’ and the pipe, as the gourd resembles the shape of the chamber of a pipe. It may also be worth mentioning that most ‘mate drinkers’ have it a few times a day and that it is a social activity in the sense that it is generally shared between two or more people. 15. pipa = pipe 16. In nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti = In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; the Trinitarian Formula, generally accompanied by the action of the Sign of the Cross. 17. Ojos que ya se no abren = Eyes that no longer open 18. Ya no miran ni registran = They no longer look nor do they register 19. Adentro, solo restan, tus cenizas = inside, all is left are your ashes
Thuy On is a freelance arts journalist and critic, who writes for a variety of publications including The Australian, The Age, The SMH, Books and Publishing and ArtsHub. She’s also the books editor of The Big Issue.
Photograph by Leah Jing
Sunflower
Reams of dead trees deadlines for other peoples’ words sunk under the pressure of domestic detritus I am unread and shelved a paperweight between festive seasons a cobwebby head needing to shake for the new year beckons This chance to flatten the path behind roll it up and throw it hard watch in awe the motes falling down blinding the dusty ways of living and loving
It’s over a clean lingua franca to be seared lessons and spite swallowed and spat out the translation will not be lost but tooled on unforgiving stone
I know I know now what to do as a sunflower fed from blood in loamy soil and minerals of salty tears I will toss my golden halo through showerbursts and thunder.
Debbie Lim was born in Sydney. Her poetry chapbook Beastly Eye was published by Vagabond Press (2012) Her poems have been widely anthologised, including regularly appearing in the Best Australian Poems series (Black Inc.). She was commended in the UK National Poetry Competition in 2013. In 2016 she moved with her family to southern Germany for 2 years where she started to translate from German into English.
The Blind Boy of Hameln
It’s been quiet since you left, but sometimes
it comes back: that fangled tune you played.
I remember how on a slow June day it crept
between church bells, beneath sunlight,
into the lonely chapel of my ear.
I don’t recall your jigsaw look (how could I?)
but felt the pleasurable dirt give way
to stones beneath my feet. Then the wind
whittled up and tossed away your song.
As usual, I fell back with the crows
at the edge of town. But if I had eyes to hear
I would have followed your stippled notes –
flowing and bidden (like a river, rats or children)
to that place erosion goes.
What it means to sleep
Every night this little death into which we fall gladly, palms soft and open, our bodies rolling into the abyss.
Later we might rise above the roofs, hear the cold crowns of trees breathing, and hover a while in the chill.
Some nights we barely make it to the ceiling; gaze down on ourselves as warm artefact, two victims of Pompeii. But mostly we hope
to lie undisturbed, fully gone from this world till next morning, when we wake to find our toenails grown long, our faces suddenly old.
Ailsa Liu is an artist working across electronic music, performance, installation, fiction and poetry. Her work can be found in UNSWeetened and Westside Jr. She writes strangely humorous uncomfortable stories, on death and semi-autobiographical experiences, of liminal spaces and their feelings of loneliness and anticipation and anxiety as generative spaces. She is a member of Finishing School and All Girl Electronic. She is currently studying Fine Arts/ Arts at UNSW.
Cultural Amnesia
Rapid fire intonation, wishes build to an incessant knock.
Trace symbolic slashes with the knife over
offerings of gluten cake and roast pork.
Melted red wax drips down candles, hardens on white sheets.
She shapes words with her lips and tongue so that the incense might linger a while longer.
There’s always one in the family that keeps to the way.
They don’t accept my whys,
Sidestep with shrugs.
Too shameful to have forgot.
Chatter instead about miles run
and stock market falls.
She tells you,
speaks to you, your chronology so that you can trace yourself back.
Your aunt in eighties fashion denim vests, only remembers that you tried to bite her.
Second aunt, you’ve accidentally written out of history.
She’s here speaking to you, wearing a searching hurt.
You’re not sure how these pieces fit together
Sharp pops, choking smoke.
There lie the men, seven generations removed from you.
Only smirks at the silence for the absent women–at least there’s one or two.
They lie on rented land,
the greenery fence-posted by concrete,
two stairways from the traffic.
Baby roasted pork, skull split
bound with red string woven tightly,
cherries for eyes, crisp to the crackling.
We carry away the offerings in our bellies.
I, point my camera, videoing away from the horseshoe grave mounds
as I direct myself away from red papered explosions.
The corners of the screen warps as if I were walking drunk.
I won’t be able to find my way back.
The river
For tepid colas fizzled flat
the children carried a tree-formed dragon to each entryway.
Hands sticky with fresh sap,
animate the leaping head.
Blessings punctuated with firecrackers,
money offerings held in a jaw of green grasses.
At rest, my cousin proclaimed languorously,
wiping sweat with slender fingers.
Ten dollars for a pleasant evening stroll.
What a steal.
We pitched that tree-formed dragon to a fiery death,
extinguished in the river.
Dad used to swim there, catch shellfish between his toes.
Now ringed by concreted, raindrops fall sideways
to disturb the surface of green scum.
Grace Yee was born in Hong Kong and grew up in New Zealand and Australia. Her poetry, short fiction and essays have appeared in various journals, including Meanjin, Southerly, Westerly, Island, Heat, Going Down Swinging and Hecate. She lives in Melbourne, where she teaches creative writing at universities.
the mission: by miss w, fourth generation chinese new zealander
each day it began with the morning poo baba’s coffee steaming kitchen tiles greased with the splatter of wok-fried food baby sister dribbling marmite in her highchair while burning toast smoked the kitchen sepia baba would hand out the cadbury’s after we’d tied our tattered shoes and slid into the backseat of the rusty fusty toyota by the time we got to school our eyes were wide as walnuts stay out of the sun our wan-faced mother would warn too-dark-like-a-māori but I knew I had to be brown it was the colour of everyone-and-everything-in-the-world-that-wasn’t-white
as pretty as miss hong kong
in summer my mother stomped around the house in bare feet. she didn’t pad, she stomped. she stomped because she hated the heat, the house and raising children in the heat in the house. she stomped because god had given her a gambling man and a job frying fish six days a week. at night when all was done for the day, my mother would sit on our second-hand hemp sofa, tuck her feet sideways like a mermaid and watch television. she liked selwyn toogood’s money or the bag because she wanted to win the sewing machine, and she loved the annual miss universe pageant because she wanted to win that too. she would ask my ogling dad if he thought she was as pretty as miss hong kong. I would be sprawled on the floor with a book not far below her feet. my mother’s feet were the colour of cooked chicken (though bonier) and the heels were cracked dry and black. she never had the urge to moisturise or to do that thing where you slough off the dead skin: exfoliate. I yearned to pull at the crusty bits myself, sure that if I could yank the skin off I would find my realmother underneath. but we were forbidden to touch any part of her body. (my little brother stroked a toe one day, and for his trouble received a kick and a blood nose). when my mother dressed up to go out she would spend hours setting her hair and powdering her face and she’d put her feet in pretty sandals. that her crusty black heels were on show didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. I think they were her parting shot, a way of saying as she left a place: ‘yes, I do look nice, don’t I? but look how hard I have to work for it’
Mary Jean Chan is a poet and editor from Hong Kong who currently lives in London. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (UK), and came Second in the 2017 National Poetry Competition. Her debut pamphlet, A Hurry of English, was published in 2018 by ignitionpress (Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre), and was recently selected as the 2018 Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice. Mary Jean is a Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critic and an editor of Oxford Poetry. Her debut collection will be published by Faber & Faber in 2019.
Cantonese
Spark of wind, gust of neon. The evening swells with the clamour
of voices. A dialect does not recognize the written word, exists if
uttered aloud, sleeps like an emaciated dog when abandoned, tail
wrapped around itself for comfort. That is what my Cantonese is,
a stray canine: I’ll admit – one I care for sporadically. Whenever
mother calls me on the phone and we speak, the dog is brought in.
come home to this body, this unhomeliness
as portrait / sourdough / bitter gourd
like a uniform / a chest-guard / a mask
called girl / boy / anything your mother wants
masquerades
under a pile of laundry / your own shadow / a sudden mourning
having failed your mother / your lover / to be its true self
where we are meant to survive / my birthmark lingers / joy is more than a crumb
Xia Fang, born in 1986, is a bilingual poet and translator. She has published two collections of translated poems and her own poetry has appeared in The Postcolonial Text, Canada Quarterly, Galaxy and Criterion.A View of the Sky Tunnel (ASM) is her first book of poetry. Her early written work was influenced by new life experiences, including the move to a new environment, in Macao. Xia completed her MA in translation studies in 2013. Now she is working towards her PhD degree in literary studies at the University of Macau.
蘑菇
細長的枝幹伏下身子，聆聽他的影子 暗淡的光線中，稀疏的草地 在棕色的土壤上，滿足於現狀
露珠在草葉上閃著晶瑩的光 蘑菇破土而出 草葉擠出行列
如牛奶一樣的煙升起來 在半空中凝結 記住，這個下午
mushroom
a slimy trunk leans out towards its shadow in the bleak air, the loosening grass that was bright — now tanwood-flooring — is content with its scale
among the glistening dewed grass the mushroom breaks the soil and parts green grass down to its brown skin
a milky grey smoke rears up and freezes in mid-air remember, this afternoon
世界便是舞臺
這個沒有果實的夏天 樹上結滿了知了
荷花在瓦罐中伸長脖子 如同舞臺上站滿了女人 有的側耳旁聽，有的八卦
白色柵欄那邊 黃色水牛蹄子淹沒在瓦罐中 瓷器店裏闖入的公牛
青蛙叫聲此起彼伏 藏在哪個瓦罐中還是個迷
the world’s a stage
it’s a fruitless season except that some tree is rich with cicadas
the potted lotuses stick their necks out straight or slant like a stage with women actors who like eavesdropping, or gossiping
on the other side of the white fence a yellow cow/bull dips its hooves into the large pot reminding you of a bull in a china shop
David Adès is the author of Mapping the World (Wakefield Press / Friendly Street Poets, 2008), the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal (Garron Publishing, 2015) and Afloat in Light (UWA Publishing, 2017).
Richard James Allen
Thuy On is a freelance arts journalist and critic, who writes for a variety of publications including The Australian, The Age, The SMH, Books and Publishing and ArtsHub. She’s also the books editor of The Big Issue.
Ailsa Liu is an artist working across electronic music, performance, installation, fiction and poetry. Her work can be found in UNSWeetened and Westside Jr. She writes strangely humorous uncomfortable stories, on death and semi-autobiographical experiences, of liminal spaces and their feelings of loneliness and anticipation and anxiety as generative spaces. She is a member of Finishing School and All Girl Electronic. She is currently studying Fine Arts/ Arts at UNSW.
Xia Fang, born in 1986, is a bilingual poet and translator. She has published two collections of translated poems and her own poetry has appeared in