I miss you though you’re not even
Dead    neither sick in body nor ill in
Head    just gone from me and so it
Goes    I miss you though you’re not

Dead    I stare at the sky so you will
not die    musty lace clouds    Miss
Haversham’s slice    loping slyly the
grey southern lights    I miss you so

even though
I miss you though there is yet more
your cane still tap-p-ing the book
strewn floor    your grit still spitting

out Poem! Poem!    your ship still
sitting just there just out from shore

Jordie Albiston

I am keeping my eye out
for a peach melba hat.
And I will keep it in
soft tissue paper
in a white cardboard box.

When I am eighty,
I will wait for a day
when the sun shines warmly,
And I will feel
my white linen dress
smooth against my skin.

And, I will sit,
stately in my years,
in the right seat,
at the back
of the right bus.
And I will wait,
and watch
for the smile
and the charming words.

I will accept them
as they are.
I will catch them,
before they are stifled
by the gauche etiquette
of some imbecile
protecting my aged dignity,
Possibly spit,
As I remind

of my aged femininity.

Kay Arthur

you won’t find it under that name
& although it’s on a corner
a block from a shopping centre
opposite a church, a school
& tucked in behind a pub
people aren’t sure it exists
people peer through th bars at th books
those in th know slide the bars across
once in, you trip over boxes
sprawl into a slough of poetry
dedicated to lovers, discarded
MEDICAL BOOKS past their use-by date
LAW you’ll find under KOORRI
PHOTOGRAPHY is hardest to find
or else it’s blind people asking for it
shelton sits in a haze of smoke
playing patience on his computer
a woman with no money asks to look at th book
he keeps in th house, th one with th pictures
I mind th shop
I tell the girl who asks for PHOTOGRAPHY
it’s next to th BRAILLE section
I catch another bloke loitering in CRIME
reading th last page of every thriller
BUDDHISM’S across th room from RELIGION
between ASTROLOGY & ASTRONOMY
customers come in with their poems
& beg shelton to praise them
they leave without buying a book
I put up a sign
advice: one henry lawson an hour
student poets fly out of th chrysalis
of shelton’s shop
empress butterfly
cassie lewis from eaglemont
& how many wobbly flights have been launched
from de havilland’s?
soaring club at clifton hill
flying kites indoors
th tug of love
th broken string of prom i ses
feral gardens admire th weeds
like central american republics
bookshops arise now!
shelley is at large

eric beach