HOLE
by Will Staveley
I am digging
To see how deep I may go
How deep and how far
I may never know;
Hence the hours away
from family or friend
Like these
And these
And all of these hours.
Do you need some
Help
I am digging for flowers
And I may never know
But that’s as may be;
There is digging to do
A path to upkeep
That which I uproot and forget about
The brown wall of time spent alone,
Drowning in underlines is a fence
in pretence of betrayal of trust
In this space which is my possession
All the greater for what has been taken away
Always taught myself my lesson
Never to reach the pole;
Call my own this frozen waste.
Hence poked holes in hands to claw me out:
It feels good to talk but far greater to work.
Every time I dig I scribble in
a rootline of chalk on a void of dirt.
In here, in here
Something in here
Flickered between the pages
I am digging to see
And the hole is deep —
remain —
Away from the walls and their steep
design, all mine, finally
having no use for time,
Nor the sun, nor the word
Nor the light sound heard
Far too busy ignoring myself
The reading voice on the radio
To bother ignoring those who wanted
Thoughtlessly throwing lovespun rope,
To tug me back and raise me up
And find how heavy holes can be.
Books are empty graves
where my youth made its plea
I buried my time in this poetry you see
And it never dug anything
but a hole out of me.
SUITCASE
by Mark O’Flynn
What can I say to you that isn’t already a podcast?
Two-and-a-half hours on the road with lunch
in Wangaratta is hardly a life worth living.
All the cheese has melted like the ice caps.
Lava might be no worse. I swear to God this prayer
is no better than a yap flying by on the wind.
The rubbish bin is full of dead and injured magpies.
I saw the man who put them there running away.
My clothes are incongruous
with the general philosophy of the times.
The policeman did not find the drugs
you had stashed in your underpants
and from that moment your life was different.
Abstractions have too much influence.
My brothers once saw my identical twin
at the beach even though to my knowledge I have no twin.
I love your left profile more than your right,
your mug shot more than your happy family snap.
It’s got something to do with the ears.
I wanted to believe you but thought, why bother?
Is that me at the bottom of your suitcase
or someone else?
Where are you taking us?
Mark O’Flynn has published six collections of poems, most recently the chapbook Shared Breath (2017). His fourth novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon was winner of the Voss Literary Prize, 2017 and was short listed for the Miles Franklin Award. His latest book is a collection of short stories Dental Tourism, (Puncher & Wattmann, 2020).
Move Along
by Bruce McRae
That thing you’re seeing –
you’re not seeing it.
That drop of blood
is in fact a valentine.
This bomb is an apple
left on teacher’s desk.
A bullet is a kiss blown
from a Hollywood starlet.
Those landmines you’ve imagined,
though who knows why you would,
are merely muddy puddles
after an unusually heavy downpour.
Listen, Mrs. High-and-Mighty,
these words you’re reading
aren’t really words at all.
They’re burning cities seen
from a very great distance.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician and multiple Pushcart nominee, has had work appear in hundreds of publications around the world. The winner of the 2020 Libretto Chapbook Prize (20 Sonnets), his books include ‘The So-Called Sonnets’; ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’; ‘Like As If’; ‘All Right Already’ and ‘Hearsay’.