last one

today is the last day of November it’s a hot one I can’t wait can’t wait to get myself to the pub and buy a beer to buy another I don’t drink so often that it ever gets old but today is the last day I’ve been toiling today since way before the sun got warm …

spe-lli-ng b-y nu-mbe-rs

Poem #18 from Small Town Kid Small Town Kid will be posted (again) as a complete collection a little way down the track. Other, currently published and available, collections can be found here.   I learned to spell in small numbers multiples of three has five and one remainder mul-tip-les-oft-hre-e sometimes I would mis-spell words deliberately …

of culture

when I was little more than child my sister a teenager we owned a reel-to-reel recorder a brown quarter inch of plastic fed from one reel through a channel of pressing heads and circling rollers to the other push both buttons down when you're ready to record my sister I believe has cultured me from …

venus of the eucalypts

the grey queen dances arms raised head laid back and high up in the clouds her body sways her hair hangs down naked she is smoothest skin smoothest silk to touch the wind breathes a sigh and she laughs a little sha sha just a little sha sha sha grey queen dancing © Frank Prem, …

lagoon #31

we are a solemn gathering now I stand at the top of the path with you looking down into the bowl to me it is a forlorn sight with the floor cracked open like a crazed sore scabbing but too tender to touch the fallen trees are a disquiet in the thin embrace of silence …

seasonal content

the season has changed without doubt now in the space of a week it has passed from light summer-doona to winter and back again as the nights have cooled inconsistently from shorts and no shirt to trackie-daks jumper socks and slippers each evening has been starry and cool the night before last it rained a …

A. Family matters

Mrs Allium Fistulosum met Mrs Allium Porrum out on the garden bed on an afternoon in late Winter. Good morning Mrs Allium, one said, and Good-morning Mrs Allium, the other replied. The days, pronounced Mrs A. Fistula, are growing longer. I’ve noticed an unsightly thickening of my leaves. I believe spring is on the way. …

the crocodile trainer

I am the crocodile trainer I have an egg-flip in my hand and six sets of teeth are smiling up at me as I line them up side-by-side big one on the left descending in size until I get to the big one on the right who's now climbing all over his neighbour Hey! Hey! watch …

lagoon #30

desiccation has occurred overnight the plump water-fat fish bodies have sagged and shriveled and the waterhole this strangely fascinating study of heat and time and detached involvement has shrunk with them since yesterday it is no more now than a muddy bog a death hallow with disturbing shapes suspended in ghost branches and a handful …

a short statement from the latest arrival

I wish to make a statement the latest new-arrival said I wish to tell you all about my life when I was born … was the way he began in a slow-build that took no account of time but as I trod lightly between the stones and the mounds in the grass the sound I …