Wednesday, June 27, 2012


After a long hiatus and many rejections, I can finally add my second publication for 2012 to my list. Warning to the Gambler will appear in Cordite Poetry Review - Jackpot issue #39. Here's a PREVIEW. Check out the PUBLICATION of my poem at Cordite Poetry Review Editor: Samuel Wagan Watson.



Warning to the Gambler

The way in is through thick double doors, between foyered palms, past
elderly stewards kneading hands. Fifty-dollar notes are exchanged for
happy-go-lucky seats, silver-dint-bar-tinkling machines. They lay down
their cards, sit hunched into their rib cage; sink into a consciousness of
play and battle.
In this warning to the gambler, one sees imprisonment and little daylight.
How many gamblers have been trapped in aisled rooms littered
with cigarette ash, zoo noises, furniture oozing years of spilled gin?
How many gamblers have watched two Kings scarper into a barrel turn?
How many have seen the chips scuttle before a fall, that fraction
before a missed fortune?

Wednesday, June 13, 2012


Catastrophe

We await the path of the storm
Thunder barks overhead like the dog
Next door. She’s up, wailing her grief
When no-one’s home
The evening groans on
Without lights, the kettle’s usurped for the gas’s
Slow metabolic rate
We don’t recognize the path of this cyclone
Never having one this far
Sporadic winds whip and the neighbour’s
Fence is no longer a division
The roads are physical coatings of debris
What turns up when the roof’s gone
How do I know such things?
Knowing is going back in time
To a transistor radio, a bite-size beginning
Shedding those hi-tech conventions
Rain enters like a stormtrooper and alarms
Flick on/ off, clocks tick, but time is soon forgotten
It’s enough to know that a hot cocoa by candlelight
Will herald a woeful sleep
Waiting for the green party lights to blaze
All electrics on

Bounty

Bounty
Prose Poetry

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett
A Family Saga

The Ozone Cafe

The Ozone Cafe
White Collar Crime

The Last Asbestos Town

The Last Asbestos Town
Available from Amazon

Evangelyne

Evangelyne
Published by Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne

of Arc & Shadow

of Arc & Shadow
Published by Sunline Press, WA

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MBA (Wrtg) ECowan

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Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Helen Hagemann holds an MA in Writing from Edith Cowan University, has three poetry books: Evangelyne & Other Poems published by Australian Poetry, Melbourne (2009) and of Arc & Shadow published by Sunline Press, Perth (2013). Bounty: prose poetry is published by Oz.one Publishing in 2024. She has three novels published The Last Asbestos Town (2020), The Ozone Café (2021) and The Five Lives of Ms Bennett a result of her Masters degree at ECU (2006), is published by Oz.one Publishing (2023).

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan
Author & Poet

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