From oxygen9

 

The Language of Snow 

So many words for snow                                                                                           my tongue turns                                                                                                        to ice

in the immigration queue. It is cold.                                                                            I nurse the English primer                                                                                            rescued from my forgotten desk. 

The book does not tell me: before snow disappears                                                    it turns to sleet.                                                                                                Slush mixed with mud is sludge,

a degree of difference only but still different.                                                       It is important to know.

Fresh snow is welcomed untrammelled                                                                        by brutish feet                                                                                                            picture perfect                                                                                                 snow white

but take the snow on a journey                                                                                mix it with muddy feet                                                                                    and it turns brown. 

I feel the heat of questions I cannot answer,                                                                a snowdrift                                                                                                                swept aside to the gutter                                                                                          brown sludge gathers                                                                                            it melts away.

I do not want to disappear.

 

Avril Bradley 

 

Submissions for oxygen10

 

Submission period for oxygen10: Friday 1 August 2025 until Sunday 31 August 2025.

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Submissions of poetry must be sent by post to:

Cheryl Howard

PO Box 614

WOODEND VIC 3442

Australia 

 

A stamped self-addressed envelope must be included for return of response.

 

Nonfiction articles can be sent as attachments within one email to poetry.clh@gmail.com

 

Photos and art must be emailed as attachments in one email. High quality resolution of 300dpi minimum.

 

Send two, three or four pieces of work.

 

All items must be the original work of the submitter and not previously published, nor on offer elsewhere.

 

For poetry, name and address must be on each page. 

 

Please do not include quotes in poems unless they are no longer under copyright protection. 

 

Responses will be sent out in September. 

The magazine will be issued late in October.

 

Albert Read

2023, The Imagination Muscle, Constable.

From the Introduction:

‘A wise person had once impressed on me the importance of reading what no one else is reading; of cultivating a rare mind; of forming perspectives individually arrived at, perhaps different from those of my peers. The purpose of such activity was to launch my own inner journeys; to land, if I was lucky, on original alignments of thought.

It sounded like a good idea at the time and I tried to follow the advice without quite knowing where it would take me. And so I would spend the evenings with one of the old books that I had picked up inexpensively. Reading partly released me from the numbness of a deflating, unimaginative working say, but it also held the more thrilling prospect of one of those promised inner journeys that could lead me to places of which I could not yet conceive, perhaps even revealing some first hint of an imagined destiny.’

oxygen9 April 2025