Ring of Fire by Mary Eliza Crane

At the wane of a long season
of heat filled yellow sky,
fire consumes mountain forests
infested, decimated by bark beetles
feasting in their own changing world.
I swim deliciously in a warmer river
without current, cringing at banks
so barren I could walk across.
The water is too hot for salmon
to return upstream and spawn.

Earth degrades to dirt, crumbles in my hand.

Early spring bloomed in a

That girl, by Heidi North-Bailey

She rides side-saddle
into her own clich�
her heart is pumping smoke
boots heavy with things unsaid
sunset flecked with mud

she�s breathing fire
flames curl from her lips
slow-dancing lovers
with cigarette smiles

slink and hips
turn on the clock

and still

after all this time
after so many battered
leather jackets
crumpled sleeps
on strangers� couches

cups of tea
from chipped mugs

Like a Reed Boat by William S. Rea

Like a reed boat
that slipped its mooring

Set drifting on
the current

Or the heaping up
of ripened grain

In the time of
harvest

He was farewelled


Gone, in the
fullness of his time

But that final
slipping away

Still came like
something unexpected

Like an empty
pier or a barren field

Which once
brimmed with purpose

Bustled with life
and vigour

Now there was
silence

Except

Papatoetoe Poems by Tony Beyer

1 Early Days

the billy that rang empty
on its hook against the gate post
last thing at night
was full of the colour of starlight at dawn


2 Originals

them kumaras is really gallopin now
Mr Kilgour in braces and hobnail boots
he'd stamp and click on the path
like a horse modestly skittish in its stall

when he came over to use our phone
party line 796D
he shouted as if he believed
a hollow and

Implausible Birds

Implausible Birds

by K. Robinson






The sort of vase described in
Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement.

A gift. A curse on me self-cast. A Sino-sin

I signed with my intent, and all Verdun's

exploding wealth now written in my skin;

my brain forever battered by those guns.



Or was it a theft? Sometimes a man concussed

would seem quite sound, so peaceful in repose.

Inside - a soupy

Like a Butterfly by Jennifer Compton

Yabase Shichoku planted a thousand cherry trees on Mt Kinsho and asked friends for poems; I was one of them.





Making flowers your life, keeping your pleasure unchanged,


a thousand, ten thousand clusters you've managed to

Villon in Millerton by James Norcliffe

for Leicester Kyle



1

a plank bed in a gully

and a woman there with

a buckled mouth my hand

plunged deep in her pigfern



turpentine and tea-tree

the sour-smoke smell

of damp coal in the scuttle

and flat beer on the bench



once I stood so tall on

a stolen Triumph

my hair streamed behind

like a thousand freedoms



now I stand two miles

above flatlanders

Three plus one: four poems for a birthday

TORCH
I was born the day my mother stopped being pregnant
a full-baked warm wetness taking its first breath
flame flickering, a miniature torch; a moth fluttering
against the pane, the porch. She held: a curved moon-nail,
thistle-like lock, darkened milk; and the clarinetist curled
slow circles around the moon


WISH
the crack of eggs, the weight of flour, chocolate powder

Grass by Jill Jones

Empty girl I was, so far inside, grass didn't know me
It was something unbending, only light seemed to touch
But so long as I could smell the sea, so long as salt
I had extrications, music, that fire, phase & beat
And all around the world went off, banners & avenues, cruelties
Now it's come one, come all, a kind of sassy hoedown
The grass is going, it cracks & withers sadly, almost infinitely
But

Untitled (If You Have Linen Women) by Robin Hyde

If you have linen
women, raspberry women


Red and thick of the mouth, with dock-leaf women
(Little light foxy spores � mind them, such women,)
If you have green grape women, flour-bin women,
Amber-in-forest, wild-mint-scented women,
Trey-bit in church or drudging kit-bag women,
Little sad bedraggled wind-has-weazened-one women,
White bean women, perhaps anemone women.
And harp-like facing the

Resilience by Keith Westwater

Mathematicians have worked out

how
to calculate the bounciness of a ball:



(the
coefficient of this x the cosine of that)

+ the differential of today's weather all � by

a
piece of string (and the speed of
the train)

= the same as dropping different balls together

and
seeing which ball has the