Sheila Murphy - two poems

Post

one of my own
path coming to
replenish
earth’s grand
harm the peaceful
huge together stays
aware and carries
none of us
each the sea
alone the prayer
returned to matter
come to love


***
Staying Home Immune
the story of a flower
making its way through
sidewalk grace
wind standing
back to temper
roof becomes
our only light

Stephen House - Two Poems

Stephen House is an award winning playwright, poet and actor. He has had many plays commissioned and produced. He’s won two Awgie Awards (Australian Writer’s Guild), an Adelaide Fringe Award, First Prize Rhonda Jancovich Poetry Award for Social Justice, The Goolwa Poetry Cup, First Prize SA Writers / Feast Short Story Prize & Second Prize Poetry at Sawmillers. He has been shortlisted / highly commended for Lane Cove Poetry Award, Overland’s Fair Australia Fiction Prize, Patrick White Playwright and Queensland Premier Drama Awards, the Tom Collins, Robyn Mathison, Eyre writers, Mindshare, Rhonda Jankovic Poetry Awards, Di Cranston Script Award, and a Greenroom best actor Award. He has received Australia Council Canada and Ireland literature residencies, and an Asia-link India literature residency. He has seen his plays and poems published, including by Currency Press, Australian Script Centre, Australian Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib Ireland and many websites internationally. His poetry collection “real and unreal” was selected for publication by ICOE Press Australia. He travels widely and continues to perform his acclaimed monologues, “Almost Face To Face” and “Appalling Behaviour”.

Bruce McRae - Three poems

1. To The Powers Of Twelve

Two-faced January,
frigid February,
a baneful March.
Falling through the numbers,
April vindictive,
May the animal
we’ve long suspected.

A sudden June has befallen us,
planets in regression.
A heated July.
An argumentative August,
its fugs and thunders.
September made of wax.
Luscious October,
posed provocatively,
like a cold shower.

November undressed.
The bastard-child
they coined December.
A blow to the sternum.
A lowly servant
to reason’s master.

***
2. The Palm Of My Hand

Render unto Caesar, sayeth the taxman,
his face like a final demand,
his face like a stormy Monday morning.
Like a door kicked in.

Your name is underscored in red,
thus spaketh the taxman, his jaw clenched
like a fist, like a knotted rope of hair.
His words were spit and bitten.

Discomfited, for want of another term,
I examined closely the holes in my hands.
My mind wandered childhood’s summers.
I lay in the tall grass and surrendered sweetly.

***
3. Wrong-Headed Prophet

I’ve a face like a torn curtain.
A face like a punched wall or rat’s dinner.
Like a smoking battlefield.
What Shakespeare would tag rudely stamped
and curtailed of fair proportion.

A stranger in stranger times,
a frightener of small children,
I’m not the prettiest angel in the choir,
my face like a crumpled map
jammed in haste to the back of drawer.
Like a dog chewing a hornet
or car crash on a desert road.
Where few are known to travel.
Where the unloved walk alone.

Patricia Walsh - 2 poems

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork.  Her first collection of poetry titled Continuity Errors was published in 2010, and a novel titled the Quest for Lost Éire, in 2014.  Her poetry has been published in Southword; Narrator International;  Third Point Press, Revival Journal; Seventh Quarry; Hesterglock Press; The Quarryman; Unlikely Stories; and Otherwise Engaged.  A further collection of poetry, titled Outstanding Balance, is scheduled for publication in March of 2020.  She was the featured poet in the inaugural edition of Fishbowl Magazine, and is a regular attendee at the O Bheal poetry night in Cork city.