Daphne Gloag: Oranges and walnuts (still life by Luis Mel�ndez)

Kirsti Whalen: Brave Like

an excerpt



Gaffer toe inside lake water. Not cold in there. Is not. Like. Imagined. Run, he say. Little eel snap snapping at your toes. Water like mud and thick too. Shallow but. Out. Out, Love Little. Out for it. Little run, Little One. Little One, his name for me.



But we are West. Rules snap snapping. This the other side. East of home and West of an older one. Western Springs. Springs

Se�n Lysaght: A Jay Feather

A Jay Feather

�for Lynda

I know of a wood that hangs
like a heavy drape
flung over a hill in the midlands.

You can hear jays deep in its folds
tearing like engines
at the fabric of a winter�s day.

Way down in the leaf litter,
beyond where it is normal
or decent for a walker to go,

there must be a fragment of that blue,
that eye through which you dive on a thread,

Jean Sprackland: At Night in the House

At night in the house
a river runs through her

carrying its burdens
the golden barges the dead griefs and the quick fishes

She lies alone
wet at the mouth
and between the legs

and it runs not always placid
sometimes angry