JOB ZIGU

SHORT STORY - I was 32 when my wife died. Little Jena was only four. My bookshop - in front of my house, separated by the yard - sustained our livelihood and paid the bills.

Each day, while my assistant and I worked in the shop fulfilling orders from clients, Jena played in the yard.

In the evening I would sometimes go out for a few drinks and Julie, the woman next door, would take care of Jena.

RAYMOND SIGIMET
| Ples Singsing - A PNG Writers' Blog

The old justice is dead, and lost to time
Where once in the hausman it chanted at night
Amidst broken betel nut and waft of lime
Spoken in a chanted glow of embers’ light

Burnt and buried, the old justice of the past
Where balance and order were societal norm
Calling upon ancestors and act not in haste
To pass judgement from man’s earthly worm

JOSEPH TAMBURE
| Ples Singsing - A PNG Writers' Blog

Under this decorated slab
A person with unused treasures lies
Treasures so huge for an entire country
Because our years are numbered
And life can be very short
Under the slab are untold treasures

Under this slab lies a wealthy man
Silent, closed eyes, a mind no more
A dead body in a small single room
With its wealth worth many millions
Sadly unused before his time was up
Under this slab also a person of worth

Victor is gently unloaded from the
Samaritan Aviation floatplane

NEWS STORY
| Samaritan Aviation

MT HAGEN - The skies were clear on a Sunday when we received a call requesting lifesaving transport after a crocodile attack on a young man.

Victor was one of two teenagers who had been fishing. While helping his friend retrieve a fish from the water, a crocodile clamped down on Victor’s leg.

Pharaoh Ramses of Egypt.
His pride led to his downfall
(Pinterest)

SIMON DAVIDSON

Provide him with stale bread, I’ll give the crumbs.
Let us feed him from our banquet of emptiness,
Let him scavenge for the barest morsels;
For vanity, he forsook eternity for time.

Let him dwell in small dens, long vacated by mortals,
Or under the sediment left by crumbling ruins,
Of a once proud monarch now long obsolete. 
In dark days, when misery gathers like dung,

R J HAUSER

This morning I dribbled toast crumbs on my feet;
I saw our driveway moping under a moody coat of mould,
while the pock-marked skin of our cul-de-sac needed pothole patching again,
and down on Gibson’s Road some vandal had overturned rubbish bins on the street.
Today two angry dog owners snarled at each other at my coffee stand,
on TV dark flooding rivers were drowning sad towns in the south,
while Putin killed Ukrainians with drone-dropped belts of heat.

The real world seemed to droop in its defeat.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Pukpuk Publications came into being in 2013 when I was looking for a cheaper alternative to the Port Moresby-based publisher we'd used for the 2011 and 2012 editions of what had become the annual Crocodile Prize Anthology.

Birdwing Books had done a good job on the first two anthologies but their prices were too high for our very limited budget.

Second Creek with a distant Tumby Island

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - They drive to the end of the track and park their cars. Then they walk down to the beach across the white sand, and stand on the rocks staring at the ocean.

Just visible on the horizon is Reevesby Island, the largest of the 20 or so islands and islets of the Sir Joseph Banks Group that lie about 20 twenty kilometres southeast of Tumby Bay.

ISSAC MOMO
| Ples Singsing

ERIMA, NCD - Long ago, there lived on the coast of Papua New Guinea a couple and their two sons. The brothers would frequently fish at sea.

This day started like any other. They loaded fishing gear into their canoe and departed.

R J HAUSER

Tandem Regina Mortua (At Last, the Queen Died)

The frothy surf of media guff is slowly ebbing
on its receding tide of feigned sincerity
leaving a beached society exposed by
the shallow waves of sentimentality.

She looked like a little porcelain statue
in the end, shiny and polished and strained,
the mouth stretched in a painful smile,
her face, pleated with lines, quite drained.

YAMIN KOGOYA

BRISBANE – You may have seen this man-like beast, masquerading as human among the children of earth.

A self-indulgent man, he decorated his empty skull with all kinds of hedonistic ideas, and sophisticated expressions and gazes.

He enters the earth at night like a thief, in fact he is a thief to steal what belongs to the children of earth.

Richard Hauser

R J HAUSER

For her birthday, my wife Sylvia was given a huge jigsaw puzzle of more than 13,000 pieces

My life is a jigsaw
its scattered confetti of peace and connection
a love progeny waiting for the final
myriad detritus colourful after the life
with lost purpose searching with meaning
my fitful open tabs for completion components
of wedding and left with longing of little pieces
of a meaningful picture.

My life is a jigsaw
its myriad components
scattered detritus
of colourful confetti
left after the wedding
of a longing life
with lost little pieces
of peace and purpose
searching for connection
with meaning and love
my fitful progeny
waiting with open tabs
for the final completion
of a meaningful picture.

R J HAUSER

We often heard Dad walking the long way home
from heavy farm chores through the winter dusk
clearing his sinuses with a snort and a spit in
the gutter and slipping into a bold hillbilly yodel
his spirits elevated by a day’s exacting labour
and prospects of a family meal and a warm kitchen.

In stifling summer heat no-one wanted to move
but he would drag his unwilling brood and a few
old stagers out into the humid midday glare
to dodge redbacks and snakes in the pumpkin patch
or screw the tops off heads of bleeding beetroots
mouthing maxims of worn wisdom he found there.

PAUL OATES

The local Party
It’s been brought to my attention,
Now that you’ve liked to mention,
It’s decidedly the time for a clean-up.

For the state of the local Party,
Has become a media ‘Tarty’,
And it’s clearly lost its celebrated way.

So for all those ‘True Believers’,
Who resisted going to the cleaners,
It sure isn’t how it used to be.

And while seeming to be quaint,
In line with Democracy, it ain’t,
No matter the different picture that you paint.

JIMMY AWAGL

On the surface of the mysterious blue
Unseen wind kissing saltwater surface
Curving white clouds of rumbling bubbles
Forcing the waves to follow in a curve
Like morning fog on the tree tops

A dancing queen with a glistening crown
Smiling and swinging in magic rhythm
Like Motu frangipani petals swaying
Stalked on soft frizzy and kinky hair
Waving steadily in ceaseless cadence

R J HAUSER

I’ve been suggesting to my grandchildren that we ought to celebrate Grandfather’s Day

In my grandfather’s day life was grim
enduring the Depression and the Wars,
it seemed as if the hard times wrung him out|
and squeezed his life force slowly through his pores

I’ve been a grandfather myself for twenty years.
I’ve learned the rules of family push and shove,
and how my times have proved quite opportune
to demonstrate strong service acts of love.

YAMIN KOGOYA

Psychopathology of the coloniser and colonised

They taught me how to celebrate Christmas and New Year,
but they did not teach me how to honour and celebrate my humanity.
I was taught how to get to heaven and how to avoid hell,
but I was never taught how to live on this planet
as a human being – the only place I know.
I was taught to see myself in God’s image,
but they never respected that image.
They taught me how to be religious,
but they did not teach me how to be a human being.
They preached the gospel of progress and development to me,
but they did not tell me how these gospels would destroy me.

JIMMY AWAGL

A fading darkness embracing the earth
Segregating the earth before sunrise
As the eyes of the bleeding flame
Glow in the hanging fog
Scattered moisture departing tree tops

A lone placid sea turns blood
With the ink of the heavenly flame
As the infant dawn casts its shadow
Commanding the wind to sleep in stillness
While the morning turns into a glittering dew

R J HAUSER

I turned seventy-six in August

I sometimes wonder about the trajectory of getting old
which is less like a steady ascent to a bright summit
than it is the awkward stumbling down a slope
to a dark vale where visions pale and hopes plummet.

Not that keen on the encouragement you get from others
whose words are meant to comfort themselves, not you,
self-assurances they won’t be called on that soon to help
and their own last years will merge with a gentle twilight too.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Ingrid and I are fortunate to share our leafy neighbourhood with many fine and gifted people, one of whom, Richard Hauser, happens to be an outstanding poet.

Fairly recently, Australia lost Les Murray and Clive James from our midst, but thank heavens we still have RJ Hauser – a man whose works are always wise, provocative, bathed in a warm glow of humanity and very Australian.

These days, Richard - who is about my age, that is, getting on a bit - spurns wider publication of his works.

This book is for you who are struggling to get out of your abusive situation and escape the wounds of the past, Survive and Thrive will help disentangle you from victimhood. For you are not a victim but a survivor, a victor, a warrior

Lydia Gah - mediator, counsellor,  family law consultant, author, speaker

LYDIA GAH
| Ples Singsing

Survive and Thrive: My Courageous Journey Out of Domestic Violence by Lydia Gah, Holistic Journeys, March 2020, 112 pages, paperback. ISBN-10: 1925884988. Purchase here from Amazon, $31.05

MOOROOBOOL, QLD - Don’t just survive through life – thrive in your life. In August 2020, I published Survive and Thrive, my account of surviving domestic violence.

Discover the secrets to living a life you desire – during and after your journey of abuse.

PAUL OATES

There’s a tremblin’ in the Kremlin,
And a rumour in the Duma,
That it‘s a serious time to definitely make a change,
For there’s those who can’t deny,
That there’s no good reason why,
Putin’s downfall's taking too long to arrange.

RAYMOND SIGIMET

It's raining like sprinklers on a farm
My ears soak up the patter on the roof 
It’s spattering like food in a deep fry 
or the sound of rousing applause

It's raining like I can feel the damp,
sleeping inside as I wake and turn,
the only warmth in my foetal position 
I pull at the cover that refuses to move

"The old justice is dead, and lost to time / Where once in the hausman it chanted at night  / Amidst broken betel nut and waft of lime /  Spoken in a chanted glow of embers’ light"

RAYMOND SIGIMET

The old justice is dead, and lost to time
Where once in the hausman it chanted at night 
Amidst broken betel nut and waft of lime 
Spoken in a chanted glow of embers’ light

Burnt and buried, the old justice of the past
Where balance and order were societal norm 
Calling upon ancestors and act not in haste 
To pass judgement from man’s earthly worm

That slab hides beneath a person of ideas / Of vision and plans all sketched out / Linked with wisdom and understanding / All this gone to the grave unused

JOSEPH TAMBURE

Under this decorated slab
A person with unused treasures lies
Treasures so huge for an entire country
Because our years are numbered
And life can be very short
Under the slab are untold treasures

"The dark passage is only life's score / Let not your fear triumph in this fight / Be brave, take those steps towards the door"

RAYMOND SIGIMET

There's something beyond the corridor
For the air is filled and sour with fright
But be brave, take those steps to the door

Each step squeaks and squeals along the floor
Fear abounds and races through the night
There is something beyond the corridor

The dark passage is only life's score
Let not your fear triumph in this fight
Be brave, take those steps towards the door

Take heart with each step to the door
Amidst shadows standing silent as the night
There is something beyond the corridor

And that something wants you to explore
It's not out of reach, just out of sight
Be brave, take those steps through the door

The political economy of a pig farmer’s life

POEMS 10 YEARS APART BY MICHAEL DOM

1,  28 December 2012

Until you have seen your hands blistering
Until you have felt sweat break like fever
Before another new gardens planting

Until you have cleaned the piss and manure
Cut, carried and replaced sodden bedding
Until you have closed the sow with the boar

"I heard footsteps brushing against the grass and crackling the dry leaves. I looked up and was surprised to see a pretty young woman, all Afro and earrings"

RAYMOND SIGIMET

FLASH FICTION - This is my story of Penny, someone I met unexpectedly. On a Wednesday.

Our meeting was extraordinary and it happened on this particularly insignificant Wednesday.

I got to know that Penny is a Capricorn, born in the month of January.

“There are many writers wondering where PNG is heading and when the vicious cycles of political corruption, poor economic development and social decay will end. Papua New Guinea is a nation in denial” - Sumatin

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Sumatin magazine, published by Michael Dom and his energetic team at Ples Singsing, is billed as the ‘space for Papua New Guinean creativity’ and is a wonderful initiative that has revived the fading literary flame lit by the Crocodile Prize.

Sumatin magazine issue 2 of July 2022, which you can access here, is a free, online production featuring both original content and relevant writing drawn largely from Ples Singsing, PNG Attitude and DevPolicy Blog.

“But when they came they hid you in the Book / And said you weren’t from around this place / We searched 'til we had nowhere else to look…”

A young Mengen woman, Matanakaka, bringing food back from the garden to the village (Françoise Panoff)

GREGORY BABLIS

ORO - I wrote this sonnet as I thought about some of the ideas arising from my interviews and other observations while conducting fieldwork amongst the Mengen (or Maenge) people of Jacquinot Bay in East New Britain.

The concept of God was a principle theme of most of my interlocutors. Nutu is one of the central characters in Maenge mythology.

I'll give you the world my little one / I'll raise you properly-even with father gone / So rock-a-bye baby / Don't you ever cry / Grow child grow, grow up and be a better man

(Photography by Nick Hedges)

STEPHANIE ALOIS

Your father disowned you and I cried
Silently in my heart and swallowed my pride
Isolated from the village and gossip of men
Pain, oh such sweet-bitter pain

The resplendent rugged terrain of Oro does not easily reveal the stories of those ragged bloody heroes, foreign and local alike, who trudged across this landscape 80 years ago

GREGORY BABLIS
| Ples Singsing - A PNG Writer's Blog

GORARI ORO - I wrote this poem sitting in my house in the middle of Gorari village thinking about this beautiful land that is steeped in the history of World War II as well as its own traditional history.

The title of the poem, 'Oro to This Place of War and Peace', points to Oro as knowing war and continuing to know it through its lingering effects and consequent materiality even in this time of peace.

"Toss me in the sea, let it swallow me!" /  They threw Jonah into this great tempest /  "God! We're innocent and let us be free!" / And the sea grew calm amidst this great test

RAYMOND SIGIMET

Chapter I 

(I)

The voice of the Lord God came to Jonah 

"Go now and tell Nineveh, the great city.

"Your wickedness, to Me, has climbed higher."

But Jonah fled to Tarshish, near the sea.

'Without you, I’m as a mirror so tarnished / pushed out of sight to the back of the room / awaiting a jeweler to give me my clarity / But, now you’re here, my radiance renewed'

STEPHANIE ALOIS

Time passes swiftly each time we talk
The world disappears when I hear your voice
Even if we both say nothing, it still feels
like the best conversation, it’s never awkward
even a vacuum filled with prolonged silence
For just hearing you breathe keeps me alive
Now I’m wondering ‘what if ‘?

RAYMOND SIGIMET

Chapter I

Out in the sea with his canoe
Wind and darkness came with no cue
And took him away suddenly
Away from land and family
Into the dusk his strength waned
Paddle and sail lost in the wind

'I’m fed up with how my family compares me to a whale with limbs. Why in the name of my beloved ancestor did I let this bugger tag along?'

RAYMOND SIGIMET

“Bro, hariap ya! Plis o! Move a little faster yah.”

He kept talking and irritating me, like a betel nut stain on a wall.

I’m big for my size and quite slow. That's why.

I'm also fed up with the nagging. I truly am.

I Froze

It happened so quickly
that initial shock
and I am arrested by
          my helplessness
                    my failure to prevent

and I froze ...

RAYMOND SIGIMET

The ancient fire burns
through time immemorial
smoke puts him in a trance

And he struts
And dances
And chants
He’s in pain
He’s in misery

TARALI TARLZEN HIBUYA
| Huli Culture | Ples Singsing

Am not that offcut, halfcut or quartercut
I am proud Hela Product!
Because, I am my father’s son.

Am pure born and bred Hela!
In good, to celebrate with Hela!
In bad, to die with Hela!
Because, I am my father’s son!

The Graduate (Debora Hasau)

JULIUS JETHRO

I'm a new Graduate
I'm a Job Hunter

I know about Book and Biro only
Taking lectures
Day in Day out

Baka Bina with fellow award-winning writers author Daniel Kumbon and poet Jimmy Drekore on an excursion to Gembogl from a literary convention in Kundiawa in the PNG Highlands, 2016

BAKA BARAKOVE BINA

NOOSA – Yesterday Baka Bina was announced as one of five Pacific regional finalists in the prestigious Commonwealth short story prize, the first Papua New Guinean to be thus honoured and chosen from 6,730 entries before the international judging panel. The original story is in Tok Pisin and PNG Attitude is delighted to be able to present this English version, translated by Baka himself, for our readers - KJ

MICHAEL DOM
| Ples Singsing

TOK PISIN TRANSLATION FOLLOWS

One day when I opened my mouth to speak
I heard a language I did not understand
I went to the bathroom to take a peek
At my reflection in the sky-roofed mirror and
To my relief the face was my very own

So I said, "Oh it's you,
I thought for a moment you were gone"
And mirror-me smirked back through
The thin looking-glass veneer
"Yes, it's me, you know I'm no voice in your head"

MICHAEL DOM
Ples Singsing - A PNG Writer's Blog

TOK PISIN VERSION FOLLOWS

My moral compass swings
On the freed finger tips
Of the monster I hide

The smiling fiend who haunts my dreams
Whose cold silhouette passes me
By the doorway in the mirror

Michael Dom - "Beier, Fitzpatrick and Jackson were opening up avenues for PNG writing". Dom and his associates are more likely to develop a design that will  enable it to flourish

MICHAEL DOM
Ples Singsing

A Tok Pisin translation of this article follows this English version

NARI STATION, MOROBE - It was my impression that one of the questions bothering Philip Fitzpatrick around 2010, as he ruminated about his once adopted Melanesian home, was that, if Papua New Guineans are writing, then where is the published evidence?

The question I raise is about the field of literary endeavour rather than the academic and workplace necessity of writing.

I refer not to that boring stuff which earns money but the thrilling stuff that returns to us nothing but self-satisfaction and relief.

Graphic by Greg Rosenke

SIMON DAVIDSON

The inspiration for this poem came as Dr Unia Api,
a lecturer at Pacific Adventist University, spoke in
the chapel to Sonoma Adventist College theology
students on Wednesday 16 March, 2022 - SD

At Simon’s saddest banquet feast,
a costly perfume of purest nard
was poured on the body of Christ.
The sparkling oil flowing down,
and aroma sweet filling the room;
‘Christ smelled like a king’

DUNCAN GABI

FICTION - It was 2018 and I was in my third year at Divine Word University in Madang when I was terminated from further studies on disciplinary grounds.

I planned on running away, to where I didn’t know, but the thought had formed in my crafty mind as I awaited the decision of the university’s disciplinary council on what to do with me.

TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL DOM

Yu lukim kunai silip antap long bus diwai
Na giraun nating insait long haus bilong mi
Taim mi opim dua long yu
Na yu tingting long yu iet olsem wanem bai yu inap halapim mi
Tasol…

Baka Bina - author and thinker.
"I give credit to those who write
Tok Pisin for print. It is daunting"

BAKA BINA

PORT MORESBY - Reading Dr Michael Dom's essays, ‘Vernacular Traces in the Crocodile Prize’, published in Tok Pisin and English in PNG Attitude and Ples Singsing, made me wonder if Tok Pisin or even a Tok Ples can be used in literature.

For many years, Tok Pisin has been used in the print media with Wantok Niuspepa, although the last time I bought the paper to read an article in Tok Pisin was three years ago.

MICHAEL DOM

You see dried grass over rough cut logs
And the earth floor of my house
When I open my home to you
And you think to yourself how you can help me.
And yet…

I smelled the air that morning we cut the kunai grass
And I heard the children laughing as they played
On the green knoll beside us
And I tasted the sweet sour sweat
As we hewed the living trees to earth.
I felt the heat of day and the burning flames
As this house was dried and bound
By light of bright blue day above
And in the deepest dark of night.

MICHAEL DOM
| Ples Singsing

In loving memory of Green Eggs & Ham by Dr Seuss

I do not like vomit flavoured ice cream
Vomit flavour is not in my dreams
And if I were to taste it I think I would scream
Please don’t count me on your vomit-flavour team

Many other people dislike it too
But I’m sure there’s someone and maybe it’s you
Who likes vomit flavoured ice cream
And maybe you dream and scream for it too