Poetry

Poems appear in the current issues of The Antigonish Review, Plumwood Mountain, Obsessed with Pipework, Curlew, The Journal, Envoi, The Lake and Not Very Quiet and are forthcoming in Poetry Salzburg, Under the Radar and Verity La.

This poem was written after a trip to far North Queensland after a hurricane and the Central desert after a drought and is currently featuring in Anne Elvey’s Plumwood Mountain.

Salt Wind Salt War

As cumuli mass in platoons
over Tribulation
they strike me as bones of a whale

but what they are for real
are supplicant fingers of pure palm
tumbled by the muscle of a cyclone

Fronds shudder and click
like pelican beaks
in times of famine

tearing breasts open
to feed chicks
straight from the heart pure blood
leaving stigmata
on parchment feather

In drought they quietly
pile the dead for shade
roll eggs into death cairns
little abortions cloud about
skirts of Kati Thanda—Lake Eyre

not here where death comes in all weathers
peace time rare as ambergris

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