September 20, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Hessom is an Iranian-born doctor who grew up in Pakistan and the UK before moving to Australia. His itinerant life colours his interest in culture, human rights and awesome Middle Eastern food. He is grateful to his Mum, siblings and partner Megan for keeping him in line.
Kandy dream
Hot quadrangle lined with
neon-yellow bananas,
sunrise papayas, king coconuts;
the din of cleavers,
steaming mutton,
rubble of intestines and
red-eyed crows;
Station Road, Kandy.
‘Halō! Āyubōvan! A salaam aleykum!’
Clamour and pang of
new markets, stall-faces of
cardamom eyes, Aryuvedic oil nostrils,
tea leaf lips: white, cinnamon,
vanilla shoots, taking root after
the weeding.
Tea for Katherine, tea for Mum,
ethnic, clean, gift-shopper’s dream.
News clipping on the tea-shelf
slips, grainy image of a Tamil man.
Naked in handcuffs, blindfold-tie trailing
as he tips into a marsh,
Kalashnikov singing his lullaby.
Hurriedly shuffled away, back to
talk of tea and Kandy.
September 20, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Rose Hunter is the author of three books of poetry: You As Poetry (Texture Press, Oklahoma), [four paths] (Texture Press), and the river (Artistically Declined Press, Oregon). A chapbook of her poems is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press (Chicago), and she will appear in the anthology Bend River Mountain (Regime Books, Perth). She has been or will soon be published in such journals as Cordite, Australian Poetry Journal, Regime, Geist, New World Writing, DIAGRAM, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, Verity La, and The Los Angeles Review. She is from Brisbane, spent many years in North America, and is now in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. She also works as a freelance editor. More information about her is available at Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home (http://rosehunterblog.wordpress.com).
el edén
to strike or dash (esp.) sharp collision
to have an effect; to make an impression to have an effect
or impact (esp.) a negative one, to take a bit of negative out
of that, big shouldered, paredón; to advance, encroach
on an area belonging to (esp.
but you went over into the death world
with those others, so many from the white room, what is it
i asked, something like punishment; impinge also
in the sense of shoulder, never
the bolder the lime green the rarer the bougainvillea
the whiter the surface the dearer the to whomever it may concern
descanso: alonso lopes guardado; same day different year
his birth date and your death date. how
do they do it don’t they know you died here, nearby
bikini sweating on the rocks helicopter mistletoe
skeleton house, lazy dog and palomino
magic wand bridge one eyed fence canyon plunge, buggy
tiny flimsy that killed you
September 10, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jake Goetz lives in the southern suburbs of Sydney. He has also lived in Munich, Germany (2011) and Graz, Austria (2013) where he studied on exchange. His poetry has appeared in The Sun Herald, Rabbit, Voiceworks, Jaws (Austria), Tide and Otoliths. He completed a Creative Writing Degree at the University of Wollongong, receiving an Asiabound fellowship to Sun Yat-Sen University in China. He is a fiction editor for Mascara.
Rudimentary sketches
… still dreaming
of Russian Pacific seas
sprouting Swedish palms
and a Peruvian woman
with lorikeet eyes
translating nationalism
as breathing – the morning
like a border-less idea
wie in einem großen kreis angeordnet
aber mit anderen namen
*
wind carries the sound
of a train to my door
and i think of waves forming
only to fold like impatient arms
in the local medical centre
and how unnatural it is
to look at the self
in the mirror
*
tree stump sits on brick ledge
wet from rain, dew hangs
from iron fence, could be watery eyes
peering into the late-morning
but it’s mostly dew and a Cockatoo sounds
cigarette burns, feet rest upon pebbles
as shade separates the yard
and a plane moves like a container
of consciousness, banking left
over the Royal to tip out into the city
September 9, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Prithvi Varatharajan is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, and a freelance producer of literature and arts programs for ABC Radio National. He is writing his PhD thesis on the radio program Poetica, which aired on ABC RN from 1997 to 2014. He has published scholarly, critical and creative writing in various Australian and overseas journals and books. His article on a Poetica adaptation of John Forbes’ poetry is forthcoming in a special issue of Adaptation titled ‘Adapting Australia
Ecstasy
the streets are wide open
leading you through a bleak
and beautiful future
rain slakes down,
slashing at the jacket
you hold dearly
by its sleeve, your chin
tucked in
we leg it over the bridge
to a dimly imagined
destination
lights of the park,
brilliant in their unreality
glisten as we pass
their globes hold pure warmth
that ebbs into the night
like a promise of happiness
Country. Car Window.
late afternoon’s
division of road,
its sleek black skin
pared open
by white
the white, a crumb-trail
to a near horizon
the white, the pulse
of something
nearly forgotten
above the road
a kookaburra
shabby in a tree
laughs deliriously
rogue hay bales
roll motionless
on a field
so vast the eye
blurs at its edges
and a fence of slouching steel
lengthens to a darkening
distance, linking
infinite horizons
with apparent ease.
April 7, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jordie Albiston’s latest titles are XIII Poems (Rabbit Poet Series, 2013) and The Weekly Poem: 52 exercises in closed & open forms (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014). She lives in Melbourne.
Rubidium
Rb– Woodward was obsessed with blue tie office ceiling parking space all painted blue perhaps he did not know love love is there in the flame emission spectrum a brightness of
rubidus love-ly dark red & tomorrow evening just before 9 she will wind her way up to
Paisley Park for the Lebanese fireworks & hold to her lover & enjoy the burst of atomic time
shower the end-of-year sky love is forever almost his half-life thrice the age of the universe
scientia vincere tenebras
the storm last night was large & morning’s sea is Shut like a jaw
it leaves not even the heel of a shoe of anyone gone “home” for
some while we walk chaotica strewn all over the shore & scores
& scores of miniscule beings bereft of kith & kin a shag protects
what is left of a jut a bit of rock thrown up like joy from the very
floor of the world you know my emotions before I feel them you
know my definitions & gulls fly sullenly through the sky mirror-
ed there in the continental drift of your vapoury silvery eyes if I
break you open you will catch fire if I say the wrong thing say
it wronger if I just say nought nought nought but I don’t pick up
I don’t know the signs & where was I when all this was taught we
turn ourselves toward the wetlands & for some while we walk I
keep half an eye for a Lewin’s Rail in the tangled lignum & sea club-
rush but nothing nothing nothing no Baillon’s Crake working the
reeds or glasswort sedge or grass the storm last night was large
o where do they go when the wind blows faster than time? the
word is — & I like how it sounds but I don’t know what it means
don’t know if I know if it matters this morning & this is no time
for being a poet the pieces are here but nowhere to put them the
word is here — the kisses are here — but no mouths
April 7, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Alan Botsford serves as editor of Poetry Kanto, Japan’s oldest bi-lingual poetry journal. Author of the essay-dialogue-poetry collection Walt Whitman of Cosmic Folklore (Sage Hill Press 2010) as well as two poetry collections, mamaist: learning a new language (Minato no Hito 2002) and A Book of Shadows (Katydid Press 2003), he teaches at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan, and lives with his wife and son in Kamakura.
a mamaist heat
i was thrown into the white heat, the tumult and trial,
the ferment and turmoil, the flurry and disorder.
i was convulsed by and floundered in
the shivering and shuddering,
i ebbed and flowed, i waxed and waned,
i pumped in the swinging and fluctuating
to quiver in the sway
and flit in the pulse.
i pitched and plunged, i bobbed and weaved,
i tossed and tumbled from pillar to post,
side to side, round and round, in and out, up and down,
and now the ardor of the cheerful fire has me crackling,
thermally loose in the burning and fully alive in the blooming,
the blush of dawn, the glisten of night
gleaming and blazing in my blood,
gossamer and solid are the circuits of my heart.
a mamaist shot
The brain shot through
With Eros
Has a mind of its own
Were it opened for business
Where the heart shot through
With Eros
Is the lion among us
Alive and well
Fiercely loyal to
No bottom line but its own
Mystery
Like
The stomach shot through
With Eros
Hungry for Otherness while
The intestine shot through
With Eros
Absorbs the lessons
April 7, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Vinita, author of Words Not Spoken, is a Mumbai based, award winning poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in Asian Cha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Open Road Review, Stockholm Literary Review, Poetry Pacific among others. She was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011, awarded first prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2014, commendation prize in the All India Poetry Competition 2014 and won the 2014 Hour of Writes Contest twice. Her poem is one of the prize wining entries to be published in the British Council’s Museum Anthology 2014. Her current manuscript of poems has been accepted by the Finishing Line Press, Kentucky, USA and is due to be published this year. She has been widely interviewed by national and international journals. She can be reached at www.vinitawords.com
Raw Silk
When at last we meet
do not say hello
That greeting for strangers…
We’ve shared too many moons on the palettes of our nights
When we meet
Leave the race behind. Face me
Become scent
Stretch my lungs
Become jaggery
Color my tongue
When we meet
Come undone like a knot in the wind
Me the shuddering threads
You the hunger for silk
When we meet
Make sure I die of love
April 7, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Mary Branley is a poet, writer, musician and teacher based in Sligo, Ireland. She has two collections of poetry: A foot on the tide (Summer Palace Press, 2002) and Martin let me go (Summer Palace Press, 2009). She is also a recipient of a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and Sligo County Council
Rūmī’s Letters to Shams
i
Shams, we have yet to meet
but I check the temperature daily
in Tabriz wondering
if it is the cold or the heat
that will send you to me
the dark season or the light?
Perhaps the fluctuations of the dollar
will have a bearing
as on the flow of oil.
Every night the angels whisper
sweetly in my ear, saying
soon your love will come
through the open window,
the smell of night rain in her hair,
dew of morning kiss on her lips,
a full moon language
in each moon eye. Oh Shams
my heart is ready for your hands.
ii
How unexpected it was
When the windows of the heart
Opened from the back like patio doors
And I entered the garden alone
Dazzled in sunlight, thick with birdsong
And the deafening fragrance of Shams
Whispers from everywhere
Stay in the garden, love from here.
Who knew the heart held such a secret?
iii
Let me make a bed of words for you
with sheets as light as the fall of dew
on the curve of your breast
and rest your head on a swan’s wing.
When you burrow in
the mattress whispers back
a silken phrase, the scent of your name
in honey suckle breath.
Let me tattoo my love all over you
with the nib of June’s new moon
indelible ink of midnight’s summer blue
crazy words you’ve never heard before.
Let me wrap your sleep
in the mandolin trills of dawn
and you can fold your dreams up small
and slip them in loose change.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Rachael is a multifaceted artist engaged in writing, performance making and visual art. As a performer and vocalist, she has featured in major festivals across Australia and overseas. She has created puppet-based visual theatre for adults. Most recently she collaborated with poet Andy Jackson on Ambiguous Mirrors, a poetry/puppetry piece that toured Ireland in 2013. Rachael recently completed a Masters Degree in Theatre Performance examining anthropomorphism, transgression and puppetry. Her writing has appeared in Overland and Sleepers.
http://rachaelwenona.wix.com/disquieting-objects
Undone
a dour Mary haunts every crevice
and chipped plaster saints congregate behind
muted windows panes
on lonely escarpments Jesus thrusts his ribs to the sky
while in the foothills stone cairns tilt and endure
in backstreets, archaeological digs yawn
disgorging dust and secrets
in the museum Clonycavan Man lies undisturbed
by the incoming tide of spectators
pooling humidity and chatter in their wake.
traveller, you pass as shadow across building and field
headstone and turnpike
you stumble on the perimeters
of this foreign history.
it all looks hauntingly familiar – and now
your own country feels like a cheap imposter
at sundown you watch the wheeling rooks
they float as flecks in a darkening sky, just as they have
every evening and will forever more
and you? where will you take refuge
so far from home?
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Supatra Walker was born in Thailand, attended school in New Zealand and has lived in the Northern Territory. She recently graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and is now a full-time student in their BA (Hon) in English and Creative Writing. She writes poetry, short stories, memoir and essays. She owns 3 guitars and 4 ukuleles and plays them all enthusiastically. She is the proud mother of two gorgeous young women and a passionate Greenie. She has recently moved to the Hunter Valley to build a north facing house that will eventually overlook a thriving permaculture garden.
Gai Kiah
I begin pre-dawn, before
the sun’s alchemy transforms the Morton Bay figs
into giant feng shui money trees of gold and citrine. An uncommon feeling
had stolen into my dreams.
I want to be at my desk, pencil in hand to capture the images
the metered words whispering and coiling beyond my tongue.
Pen won’t do.
Computer won’t do.
There is something that keystrokes can’t capture.
I sharpen my pencil and begin to write.
My hand is doula and letter
by letter
words are birthed naked defenceless like wild things caught
in a snare in the glare of scrutiny they string out
or jam up struggling
for a place on the page
for space in a line
for the chance to become part
of a whole
something
much bigger than themselves something
more metered than syllables something
as round as vowels
something more
percussive than consonants, the something
on the landscape of my page that is something
more meaningful than nouns and something
more cohesive than syntax and so
so
much more than mere conjunctions but
the shuffling and writing and erasing reminds me instead that
my handwriting is gai kiah: the indecipherable scratching
of a chicken.
There is no beauty in gai kiah. This is not the hand that writes thank you
letters or the inscription in birthday cards.
I study the geography of my sentences,
the mountains and valleys between the letters,
the tails and rivers and streams that hook and bend
or simply
end and
then I am reminded of a story my Thai kindergarten teacher
read to us about
the seven chickens who had flung themselves into a fire
in grief when their mother was killed and
fed to a wandering monk. Their souls cast out
onto the night sky became a cluster of stars. I cried.
When asked why I was crying I lied
and said I had a dog that died.
I didn’t know the Thai word for sad, you see.
I didn’t have a dog either.
But here’s the thing: I remember
this story because ก (gaaw) is the first letter in the Thai alphabet
and ก is for gai as
a is for apple.
I formed ก on the lines of my exercise book.
I erased my mistakes but
the eraser caught the edge of the paper.
Then I knew that the crumpled and corrugated ravines
of my page are testament to my farang-ness.
And so the ungainly row of กs
big, and small some missing their beaks legs splayed, stiff
ungainly and culturally crippled march
lost, jammed and shambling up and down
the papery spurs, through the miserable smears and over
the rubbery charcoal worms
of the erased dead and into
the history of me.
Hessom is an Iranian-born doctor who grew up in Pakistan and the UK before moving to Australia. His itinerant life colours his interest in culture, human rights and awesome Middle Eastern food. He is grateful to his Mum, siblings and partner Megan for keeping him in line.
