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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Two
November- December 2025
Spot Fires, poems by Magdalena Ball.
Spot Fires
In the Walkman era
love letters were mixtapes
scattered across
an apartment floor
spot fires, capitulation
do the thing, say anything
to get you home. A compliment
that raises the hair on your arms.
Plastic film scattered across
a bedroom that no longer exists.
The stereo system of your dreams
playing on repeat in another dimension.
The body is an answering machine
leaving a message for a future self
the sound held for decades
delicate and enduring as glitter.
Fire & Moon
Acrostic after Fire & Moon 1 by Vyvian Wilson (2012)
First I dreamt of fire chimera without fear
in an ocean that melted into air
my body also liquid
raging and lost crashing waves
emptying breath the long night
& later, in the darkness of predawn
I was there still
morning as light purple shadows
over another tableau texture of what was
yet to come
on the surface there was nothing to tell
but below
a rising chaos
no sunrise could dissipate.
Money box
boxes for dollars
cells for a shrinking heart
coffee ring laminate
text to column
sunlight for fluorescent
trees for a migraine
the money box never lies
statisticsa different lifeform
always a few minutes later
than you needed
it adds up if you don’t
check the backend
the wind is getting up
but cells hold me
such soft lines, I never imagined
this would be the way we’d end
tapping out seconds
left-aligned bullet points
picking up the pressure
breaking code
© Magdalena Ball
Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer, interviewer, Sustainability Manager, Vice President of Flying Island Poetry Community and Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, one of Australia’s most respected online review sites, which has been publishing high quality book reviews since 1997. Her work has appeared in an extensive list of journals and anthologies, and has won or listed in many local and international awards, including, in 2023/24, the QRAA Ekphrasis Challenge, the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition, the SCWC Poetry Award, the Liquid Amber Press poetry prize, the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s international poetry prize, and the Woollahra Digital Literary Award, as well as shortlisting for a Red Room Poetry Fellowship. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, most recently, Bobish, a verse-memoir published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2023.
