The Poems of the Month for August 2026, selected by 2026 Anthology editors Elizabeth Salna and Erica Jolly, are You can’t keep a good witch down by Jude Aquilina and Fresh Blood – Ode to Young’uns by phil saunders. The commended poems are An Unforgotten Song by Darrell Coggins, Sophia’s garden, a ‘sabbath space’ (with Wendell Berry in mind) by Dawn Colsey, Dead Weight (For Russell) by Ros Schulz, and Backstreet Shoes by Michelle Slatter.
You can’t keep a good witch down
Jude Aquilina
Sweeping across a sallow moon
silhouetted cat riding up front,
the cliched witch-woman was pitched.
Dunk her in some minor river – if she floats,
she’s a toad-whore curse-hungry witch.
Too bad if she sinks.
In the courtroom of the verdict-heavy glade,
hear the outrage of her ways,
then watch her evil embers rise,
celebrate the town’s ridding of sin.
From fourteenth to seventeenth century,
any healer-hermit woman living in a forest
collecting mother-wisdom herbs,
religiously hunted
to prove the fake-news of the day.
Bones broken, burned to ash
sunk in river silt or buried deep
on village fringes.
Yet, yearly when leaves fall
and rain speaks truth
she revives: witches’ fingers,
pink and tipped with slime,
growing six inches in six hours.
Bubble bubble through soil and rubble,
Grandpa Mycena causing trouble
a wicked coven still meets each year,
here where witch’s fingers appear.
Stinkhorn, gleba, little eruption
of fetid death-slime
attracting flies and slugs
to lick late-autumn’s tasty spores
from under her weeping fingertips.
If on a bushwalk,
you come across a damp hollow
where haphazard hands,
six-fingered, twelve-fingered,
wave and sway,
ask yourself:
What alien species,
neither plant nor animal, rises here?
Whose hair and bones from long ago
are feeding this patch of stinkhorn,
witches’ butter or dead man’s fingers?
Fresh Blood – Ode to Young’uns
phil saunders
consider these young’uns at Friendly Street Poets gatherings
finding their way to front up at open mic,
at the ready to face the room,
rows of older folk, writers of experience, poets of renown,
experience, confidence, comfort amongst long standing colleagues.
this scribbler recalls early years:
commissioned work, magazine covers, radio verse plays, performance group membership,
streams of consciousness penned in far off places,
pieces collected unexpectedly by a mother who kept correspondence:
years where creativity was addressed through other forms,
poetic heart beating beneath any veneer,
occasional pieces at events with friends.
now revival supported by companionship, understanding, clarity of mentors.
doff hats, bow heads, applaud, smile in recognition, appreciation
of these young’uns,
their openness to any muse
that walks through their doors, sneaks through their windows,
flies through their clouds, rises from their ocean depths;
their willingness to offer these pieces of themselves before us veterans,
displaying their understanding of the craft we all love dearly,
their capacity within its forms,
not only lowering the average age by some margin
but adding their inspiring challenging magic.
doff hats, bow heads, applaud,
change your religion, praise the muse gods,
smile in recognition, appreciation, welcome
to these our peers.
they stand tall amongst us
An Unforgotten Song
Darrell Coggins
Solitary at nightfall
calm in a refuge from
outside
embroidered like linen
precious hours curl
around me
recollections drawn to
my reverie
for unknown reasons
listened to somewhere
before
arcing between pin-drop
silences – fanciful over
plaintive chords
held still beautiful
a song in the front
of my mind
Sophia’s garden, a ‘sabbath space’ (with Wendell Berry in mind)
Dawn Colsey
I pick up two leaves:
The ancient pear tree gives me mottled beauty,
yellow and green, as though patriotic for this land,
but though she is old, her origin is exotic.
She shows her belonging in rising with spring green
from leafless branches, looking dead,
to provide rich canopy, leaves and fruit,
not minding that she journeyed
from another hemisphere.
The mighty oak, also exotic, speaks to me of timelessness.
This one too, has come across the seas,
not as ship’s beams or bodywork, but acorns for sowing,
early comers needing familiar wood
before they could discover the vagaries
of eucalypt, acacia – strange grey-green, brown-green leaves,
foreign, needing to be loved into familiarity,
like the oak of the old world.
Dead Weight (For Russell)
Ros Schulz
Life has a mind of its own;
it just walks out and leaves
a body softly marbled, that gives
no flicker of response, no directions,
turns our questions back on us.
To lift a living body is joy
when there’s a spring to meet you, as if
the motion once begun is self propelling,
but a sleeping one resists,
drags against your living will.
So I tried to raise this hand that once
a brother’s warmth contained,
but it stayed sculpted to its side;
an attempt to prise it would have been
indecent – no shaking would produce
one twitch of muscle, no pleading
make one line in the taut skin,
his thoughts his wishes frozen.
Carrying the coffin down the aisle
we feel the weight – the loss comes after.
[for Russel ~ a professor of Education at Flinders University
and then Monash till 1995] Ros Schulz 1995
Backstreet Shoes
Michelle Slatter
Squeezed between
warehouse walls and
graffitied garages with
Do Not Cross tape
tattering around a wrecked door:
a No Stopping backstreet.
Parked on a yellow line
prim, perfect:
a pair of high heels
peep-toes open, gazing at the sky.
Your shoes.
Your black going-out-to-something-special shoes.
Patent. With crystal bows.
Light soles. No Louboutin red. No diamonds.
But special.
Were you dancing up the street, whirling, singing, laughing,
stretching an elastic happiness to the max?
Barefoot and beautiful.
Were they pinching, dutiful
for an evening out with the team, wooing a prospect, signing a deal?
Job done. Shoes off.
Were they a failure,
no effort spared but no flame rekindled?
Never again. Damn them.
Were they a danger
slowing you down, tripping you up,
delivering you to evil?
Now here they are.
Tidied. Waiting.
Hopeful.
Hopeless.