Yawn by Sarah Rice

Funny how a yawn travels through a room

a pied piper gathering all the rats

In that instant we all draw from the
same source
a great swallowed gasp shoved into our lungs



like socks stuffed in a bag
and the
long outward sigh



That we try to hide it up our
sleeves
makes us culprits in common


like playing truant

with a friend



It�s mostly like this
our bodies
that bind us together

The Topography Of Wellington, by Jennifer Compton

Two short poems by Vincent O'Sullivan

Skol



A man I talked with in a bar in Berlin

once read poetry, he said, with passion, served

with distinction in an army he loathed. Beyond

which he said little. He drank Schnapps. He advised,

as we parted, to avoid epiphanies as I would gunfire.

His phrase for ordering a Schnapps was 'to dim the
lights'.






The
sentiment of goodly things



The birds are back at the feeder

now the

"Tourist�Limerick" by Libby Hart

.
The
cry of a gull from God-knows-where

And
the church bells

And
the cars forever passing

And
the girl screaming at the stopped car

And
the horns tooting

And
the girl saying: That�s crap, that is

And
the little man in the passenger seat laughing his head off

And
the lights of Paddy Power, all bright and shiny

And
the smell of coal-smoke

And
the cheap hotel room

where
1,000 other

A lyrebird by Michael Farrell

A
lyrebird



Swift-footed it stops behind a mountain ash.

All genres are destroyed at last.

History, mistakes, swallowed up in a nominal grub.

The slow wild alcoholics of the nineteenth dare make no
reply.

I tip my beak to the sky.

A nest-building lament starts up.

It's humans taking up too much room.

Swift-footed it stops behind a mountain ash.

The enclosed imagination buys a hunting

Like a Butterfly by Jennifer Compton