RUBY
Golden Eagle
After ‘Lead You to the Shore’ by Steven Oliver (Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today, UQP 2020) I’m a dark horse beating down the door somewhere childhood escaped the streets etching three syllables of my name beneath the …
2 Codex
Codex SAMO© first appears as a tag on a New York city wall in 1978 two blocks down from Aswad bookstore. It is a kind of Codex to speak the unspeakable as if it were a confession on redbrick or …
Folio: Brisbane
I first spent time in Brisbane as Poet in Residence for QPF back in 2015. I came up with the following poetic exercises for my 2020 residency, as a way of being there again, if only in my mind. I …
Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Heavy Rainfall and Damaging Winds
it’s dog hour UV finally set to rare getting in walkies before the Bureau sends in the BOM squad earlier sun by the kilo off the back of a truck buy one get one sun free glare neon-tips the flame …
Wheelie bin
Day softly overcast. Breeze pushing back 8am humidity. Lined up on next door’s rooftop: 8 honeyeaters, 1 kookaburra. Easing the day forward with squabbles, preening & morning-soft banter. At 12pm, clouds shiver & threaten clean laundry. The rush to close …
Last Train Out of the City
In 2011 I got a chance to go to Belfast for a queer arts festival, and largely because those two words – Belfast and queer – don’t appear in sentences together nearly enough, I jumped at the chance, and I …
Pre-heatwave Interlude
6am They say the world sleeps but this is rarely true for people the white noise traffic lingers eternal drowned by morning rituals of turtle doves and lorikeets perpetual feuding with mynahs. The cool breeze isn’t quite awake drags its …
then is now is then and here is there — a forecast
this morning I feed the neighbour’s cat I’ve done it for the past few days and nights it feels like we’re pretending that this is our life now the first time I fed her, her fur bristled at my touch …
