close

Poetry

CreativePoetry

Vampyre

no thumb
Content Warning: Gore, Death You love to play games, hiding under the bed waking me up with pretty fangs in my neck   Have you been waiting all these years  Carmilla, my dear?  i knew you before light, before time something ungodly promised  you would be mine   Angel of the tiniest death, leaving me shaking and struggling for breath how can someone so soft - sensitive, completely transform after sunset?   If heaven won’t have you than they’re nothing holy, this creature or demon has shown me more love than anything given by those up above   Hold my
Read more
CreativePoetry

Chance

no thumb
In this recurring inspiration lies a craving for the inevitable– a hopeless desperation for a negligible spark to light the way.  Drown these misgivings.  Life begins again without consideration. It reveals its beating remnants in the irrevocable seconds between failures. There is no greater power announcing the start– It's already begun.
Read more
CreativePoetry

Rose-Coloured Glasses

no thumb
Content Warning: Discussions of Future Uncertainties I was once informed that life travels blissfully when moving ahead but if you turn around,  the road you constructed  yearns to retrace your steps.   Retreating, being surrounded  by our memories. Offering an escape,  a sense of comfort like a warm blanket  during the winter. It is so tempting   Should I stay. Should I try to relive the beginning.  Isn't it better that way? Or should I carry on with my journey i'm torn   Am I seeing things  through rose-coloured glasses or am I afraid  of facing  what’s right in front
Read more
CreativePoetry

Vascular Ink

no thumb
Energy drips from hanging vines — your vascular form, twisting rope threads in a violent movement, conjoining semantic with somatic fingers, electrifying neurons to hold, to ink.   The page a stele of memory etched from the incision of cognition into rudimentary words, poor urns for the ashes of your “who”: pottery pieces fragmented and forlorn   like runes and hieroglyphs of heathens and romanticists whose reality’s rose withered; paper burning, pottery breaking— ink, a water colour drenched to pale nothings, bleeding white.   But the movement excites you if it does not memorialise you. Exeunt, the elegy and the
Read more
CreativePoetry

Murakami Clothes

no thumb
My wardrobes are facsimiles of you carrying with them the unprinted text, invisible ink lying about where it was from what it was: pieces of cotton and linen that lies there dormant  in the wooden frame, whispering what have I done, will you wear me again, and smile?   It’s that stupid Murakami shirt The one that murmurs: ‘Don’t let appearances fool you’ mirrored and unreadable, a mirage like black and white swirls to fall in and lost. Somewhere, a crumpled shirt for the optical op-shop bin, creeping around silent as a fractured thought, the everything from nothing that whispers
Read more
CreativeFictionPoetry

alienated

no thumb
Every time that I hang out with you and them I feel so alienated but I feel like an alien would fit in more than me  because they are inherently interesting and I just feel like the most boring person alive   I can’t keep up with any of the jokes while the three of you go back and forth, faster and faster and I force myself to laugh  in grating harmony   I grapple with possible things to say but none of them seem worthwhile sometimes one of you says something I had thought of  and I resent myself
Read more
Creative

Torn

Joshua Nai Blur
This poem and artwork were both first published in Lot's Wife Edition 3, 2021. Content warning: sexual assault, violence, mental health, grief. This piece was inspired by the Four Corners coverage of the sexual assault allegations against former Attorney-General, Christian Porter. Kate, the anonymous woman allegedly raped by Porter, was a young woman of sharp intellect and a bright future ahead of her. This seemingly pivotal moment in her adolescence shaped the many years following and defused the light of her highly anticipated future.    I know the way they look at me: as though the hem of my life, 
Read more
Creative

To Be Safe During a Pandemic

Station Shrusti Mohanty
This poem and artwork were both first published in Lot’s Wife Edition 3, 2021. Content warning: pandemic.   I am sitting in my balcony as I write this. Like the sky, my mind is gloomy.    I’m thinking about those who’ve lost their lives and those who had to watch them leave. Helpless cries and screams that I hear through my screen. It’s hard to believe, because I’m safe and privileged and away from reality.    So, have I experienced a pandemic? I’d say no! Because a yes would be a slap in the face to millions, and I’m not
Read more
Creative

Isolated Transmission

Kat Kennedy Polaroid
This piece was first published in Lot's Wife Edition 1, 2021.  Content warning: isolation, lockdown themes.   I speak to my homeworld. But I don’t live there now. It’s just nice to know it exists behind my screens.   I watch you making circles around the sun.  It has no bearing on my artificial schedule up here. I sleep and wake when I can.   What do I look like up here?  I haven’t checked for a long time, but my hair has become bizarre. Every time I take a spacewalk I have to suit up.    No, of course
Read more
Creative

Faith

Myles Blum Flowers
This piece was first published in Edition 2, 2021.    I've been looking for a feeling I lost her somewhere way up there in the abyss among all the lost balloons I can still see if I close my eyes and ask for  something; exhalations or good faith (or you) somehow  light demands entry into this space you aren't – light carves into my hollows fills out the caves you left behind finds homes between the blurry lines you were so good at drawing; I tried once but my heart got in the way of my fingers along with all
Read more
Creative

Striking Flame

Flame Aldo Prakash
Content warning: mental illness   What do you do when it all unspools? Re-tie? Re-tie? Re-tie?                                       Why?                                                 When there’s no forwards but backwards,   why stick a bandaid on a disintegrating psyche?                                       Why?                                                 Well, we are not just us; we are all of us–        so think, if you can,   of seeing an empty hearth  swept of residual ash,   ready for tonight’s blaze, amid the winter peltings.  
Read more
Creative

Who Am I Today

Envangeline Sarney Unsplash
Who am I today? With that crimson lipstick Ready to make an impact Bold and daring    Who am I today? With my black combat boots  Ready to make a scene My identity, unknown    Who am I today? With iridescent earrings  Ready to make a difference  Carrying elegance throughout    Who am I today? In that skin-tight dress Ready for a good time   The centre of attention    Who am I today?  In my oversized hoodie Ready for the waterfall of tears For life is not always full of roses    Who am I today? In my graduation gown 
Read more