Judith Beveridge

We’ve heard they make music by tying tin pots to donkeys, yanking on the ropes then beating them with wooden goads. We’ve heard their highest cultural achievement is a poetry that never veers from the subject of spitting in public …

Distance—continuous, ungestured. Crows on fence-wire-watch stretching into a haze. When a kestrel hovers it’s an abundance— like water, or a horizon with a hill. We pass towns, streets written-off by dogs and half-asleep dreamers. Those who live at the edges …

Sunset here is the distant roar of motorbikes, and down Pacific Street, I hear the enormous rage that fills the mosquito’s head. Flies still circle the day’s unalterable groove. A gull pierces the distance like a sail needle. Summer’s already …