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After the fires, January 2020
After the Fires, January 2020Grey tree fringes on the silent hill-corpsesprout from the pelt of fire-slaughtered slopes.Once green – grasses, bushes, treesteeming with power and lifethe rustle of echidnas, lyrebirds, skinks.Now silent, the brittle charcoaled limbs the wombat burrows of burnt flesh singed furbonesfeathersbeaks.I recall the agony through aching eyesof black carcasses plunged from burning…
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I am a girl (#believeher)
I am a Girl. (#believeHer)An autumn morningI am six years old walking to schoolkicking autumn leaves. A new immigrantWearing baggy pantscarrying a leather satchelmy hair short and dark. A gang of Anglo ‘big boys’ surround me,“Are you a girl or a boy?”I am confused, no-one has ever questioned mein this way before. “I am a…
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The Swim
The SwimSmall children snorkel at Mitchie’s jetty by the sandy grin of beach squeal in the silver-skinned lake,as stingrays glide and twist, morphing from flesh fan to slow, finned projectile.Embracing this inter-tidal world, I float,as mangroves coil around us, roots birth sea-litters and form air straws like uttering tongues. Buds sprout into leafy salt-pumps; seeds…
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The Dam Square Massacre May 5th, 1945.
The Dam Square Massacre May 5th, 1945 In this new land, I sit with my mother in whispers, she tells me her story of the Dam Square, of Amsterdam where she, a child, small and excited had snuck out to dance to the end of the war to patriotic songs of the Netherlands cranked out…
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Princes Highway
Princes Highway The colony was an evil thing it snaked along a poisonous course. Displaced, pilgrim settler forced. Move aside We’re coming through! to multiply procreate dominate. The hungry chained flinty hooves ruined soil ancient bones Murnong spoilt its roots exposed. I hear the sounds of ancient groans. Two lanes meander Ant-nest fringed eucalypts, tree…
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Long Covid eyes
Long Covid EyesThe waves roll infading on warm white sandunseen like a blind dream.He lies outside, waking eyes open, achingdistant waves crashing whimpering, breaking.A blue sky, her kind facethe higgledy-piggledyall-too-human race.Vision ddoubledlife now in ppairs one pat: two ddogsone croak: two ffrogstwo sseagulls overheadwhite wwings touching.Her face blurs her gaze lost in his blind eyesa…
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Lapwings and kite strings
Lapwings and Kite StringsConnecting genocidal colonialism in two continents. I see a bright thread floatingfrom cloud to watchful bird,catching at feathers of grey and white,slipping through claws of razor-sharp,threading the water of the river to caress a fish, then soar to the top of Eagle Point Bluff. A kiss for the boy who looks heaven…
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I could have said
I could have said(After Omar Sakr’s Here Is The Poem You Demand.)I could have hidden my sticking-out ribs thin legs, hungry belly & shoes too tight.I could have said, ‘I come from here’as Australian as a cockroach on the school oval.I could have said, ‘Domkop!’ when my tongue was tiedyou probably would have thought I…
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Hunters
HuntersOn Short Point, a cuppa from the thermos, she whispers. ‘Thanks’struggling to shake off the fog of nightmares dead babies, body parts and screams. No longer one bomb every four minutes.Now, four bombs every second.While he slept, she caught up with her livestream of Palestinians in Gaza, and life must go on but drones are…
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Full moon
Full moon Full moon through the windowa creamy marble above black rooftops.My husband stirs under the doona.I should wake him, Look, a Tom Bowler.But hear the creak of the house piningas he flies again to a watermelon childhood,a circle drawn in Wimmera sand,one eye closed tight, tongue sticking sideways.Playing for keeps, he flicks the milk…