Botany Bay
-- David Starkey

In certain parts of Sydney,
the sons of sons of convicts
still pay for fathers' sins.
The women lined up
along the road barely need
to smile for the men to feel
the sadness in their heads
surrender to the tingling
in their groins. In this place,
"teeming," as Captain Cook
said, "with all manner of life,"
one realizes inevitably,
over and over, that there
is no substitute for power.
So the men concede
what is aboriginal
in themselves, disappear
for fifteen murky minutes
to hotel rooms and cars,
clutching, thrusting into
that illegal love, transported
like criminals again, seasick
in a crowded, hot and salty hold.


The Coil
-- Tina M. Dubois

Not the only option
I could have torn
these bed sheets into strips
a braid's weight against my back
you heard my singing
in the woods perhaps

I could have called down to you
Bring a rope
a grappling hook
instead of this pull against
my soft scalp
your violent tugging
up to the window
all for a bedroom picnic
a song on your poorly-tuned guitar


my new royal portable
-- Ben Carlin


I stare at my dinosaur
and pray that it waits
at least one more day before
deciding to eat me.
I would really like a week or two,
but I won't push my luck.


she is a herbivore, and almost
as extinct as a flesh colored crayon.
she licks her chops in anticipation
of a lull, so I ignore her salivating jaws
and keep working.
She sees the chartreuse shade of my flesh
and knows
that I am vegetable.


Give me something, brontosaurus.
Perhaps a glimpse into the future.
Give me a future, you vegetarian fiend.
Because I cannot work with crayons
and I, too, am hungry.


Adrenaline Highway
-- Keven Lock


Descending the cataract
Of a ten lane adrenaline highway
at 80 miles per hour, windows down,
a lady in a snake blue muscle car
Pulls along side to listen to my radio.
Her smile is blinding,
Her beauty bites at my eyes.
I'm beatin' my roof like a tom-tom
I'm drivin' with one hand
And writin' with the other
As we shoot the traffic
Swaying side by side
Chasin' the skyline
And the setting sun.
I glance to my left
And back to my right
And she is gone
Forever.


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