I
We found it. The house, down a jagged unpaved roadthe owner recently widowed coughed her warning:
The peacock comes with the houselit the freshburn her next cigarette—floral
nighty open to a tongue of breeze.We took it. [The house, because we were told such things could
be bought & sold. But we were untested / untried—thermite.]Then, a frenzy of activity. Grass turned
elementAl the small electric mower, pulled through its last gasp—
a haze of rotary splutter.
There were snake eggs: a Medusa’s nest waiting for heat to burst them.Evenings fell a swoop. Breeze waved
smoke wood tang, fire and coal. We ate from the pan,
your exclamation: This is stars’ end.First light, the sky broke—a candy-cane swirl.
Magpies and currawongs picked over remains—
solidified pan juice, discarded rinds, pieces of gristle.Before morning tea, the path baked
through. I laydown, let small
ants bite
a line
of flesh.I found you blowing flies from wet cracks—
the corners of your mouth.We watched strawberry plants plat across wormed earth,
woke to fat caterpillars feasting on budded leaves.
Tossed song lines across the court of afternoons.II
The fire ripped through late—no
warning. The radio’s almost packed it in, its static lost to the
howling / the furnace sky bellowedwe watched seething
flames tongues wild agape.
The flames licked and hissed and climbed—the two headed
Janus
leaving us
and the animals, panting. Everything everywhere burning.When we returned (the trees were black-end-ash) the peacock
only came
after wrangling—all that was left was an x-ray the mackerel sky
churned to dust.Even light had melted. Broken
its back against the flame.
Notes
An Etch A Sketch contains aluminum powder. The surface
behind the screen becomes coated when you shake it. In
the TV series Breaking Bad, Walter White uses an Etch
A Sketch to make thermite in order to blow a lock.The symbol Al for aluminum comes from ‘alum’ which is
potassium aluminum sulfate. The name derived from the
Latin alumen, bitter salt.A fire is made up of three principal elements: ‘fuel that burns,
oxygen that allows the combustion to occur, and heat.’ Fire
intensity is represented by units watts per metre; tens of
thousands of kilowatts of energy can be released in a bushfire.
NSW bushfires Q & A: How firefighters contain a massive
blaze.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones