29.0: PASTORAL
Michael Farrell: cold turkey
i was raised in a traditional background youd recognise it, two trees some rails a dolphin, sun going down, the usual drug problem. what are you looking at? god, suck it up. if only there were more like you ready …
David Jeffery: I can’t smell what you’d like me to
out here past the kangaroo tent past the magpie toilet through the ant infested rubble that calls itself a home nah it's all bullshit I don't want it but I need it we all need it But it doesn't mean …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL Comments OffIan C Smith: Your hair was so yellow
Here in Great-grandpa's hut an invocation of eucalyptus. Mist appears most mornings on this ridge caught in rough branches' cobwebs. I rebuild what is worth preserving employing hand tools from the past my favourite, his antique adze. Hammering ricochets down …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL Comments OffDavid Musgrave: Snow
The field is in its element: confetti knee-, neck-deep. As rain is the applause of the sky, so this is delirious burning in cold light: a hyper-tide of breathing. Skies vanish in warm breath-banks, opacity of words and, quarried from …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL Comments OffMerrindahl Andrew: Like Fire but Cold
like fire but cold the orange uplit clouds stream across the depths the fierce stars driving up I felt kangaroos watching from the bush my foot over the brake each to our own godless apocalypse the city below is obsessive …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL Comments OffRachel Thompson: This Town Cannot Hold Itself Against the Sky
Walk a while in any direction and you'll find a field or an empty bottle or a pop can filled with purple gas It's not big enough to be a real city but, heck, there's a mall you could walk …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL 2 CommentsIvy Alvarez: Curing the animal
My husband hands me the animal. A soft neck roll and a dead eye, a lustreless fur that I must touch to strip and salt and peg to dry. He is away all the day in the dust. a eucalypt …
Ivy Alvarez: The Pastoralist Speaks
At the edge of the close-cropped lawn laps the drought, thirsty tongue all out. Every change of name pocks its mark. A scratch of smallpox on a survivor. The squatters clear a small place. A tongue licks dry lips. A …
Edward Reilly: The house leans
The house leans against the icy southwesterlies, Dreaming itself as one of those pioneer ships threading Between gnarled cliffs near Glenample & barbed islands, Running in uncharted waters before five green fathoms Under a Moon too shy to show even …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL Comments OffLuke Beesley: Race Horse
In a large semi-detached timber dwelling doubling as a restaurant, a patron has ordered something no longer on the menu. Verb. To hit someone with a horse. To run into someone with an old race horse with a royal title …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL 6 CommentsRon Pretty: stalking utopia
braking by the wide verandah a pall of dust behind the ute dogs slouching towards the driver waiting to be borne aloft loaded on the tray no-one walks to the shadow of the pub stalking utopia a string quartet isaac …
Posted in 29.0: PASTORAL Comments OffWM Lewis: II
each day I am bird glad. hassling the sky as it flies straight and believing my enemies colour blind. I am whistling and hooting the air into moulded proper shapes (even now.) one startled day I will inhabit that kind …
Jen Jewel Brown: Breath
I come from the dead zone with clap trap jaw and clankin gait and bulletswhistle is my song halloooo coooweeeeee goes burnin down thegreengullylacedwithferns curlin coyly hideaway and low-dippin' currawong calls my locomotive breath announces me, my breath in the …
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