My cousins & I made a new home for the farm dog
between two grey toes of one of the Cypresses.
If you know them, they are inauspicious:
they have done their job as uncomplaining windbreaks
for decades, even approaching centuries
in the case of the big colonial cattle holdings.
They are indentured to the full-scale mollification
of the Southern ocean on the basalt plains.
In their native Monterey, they tend the other way,
risking life and limb for a random cliff
on the Pacific coast. For wont of an ocean vista
on retirement, they exist in a state of relict parlousness.
As working trees out near the farm’s boundaries,
conversely, they get few visitors: a lone cow,
lost on a very hot day; a cast-iron bath with brass feet
always too confused to be a water trough.
A full stand of Cypresses makes its own
acid rain of mulch; an understorey of prone brown
needles, like the landscape after Mt St. Helen’s,
or large-scale cropping, or the Tunguska Event.
We had to dig through broad deposits of that stuff
first, and we had no need of implements,
small hands being enough to rub away the resin
and the rain, and its weak attempt at sediment.
After all pawing out a kind of triangle barrow
in the actual soil, I think we commented how
dark it was down there: true dark, like
an isolation cell, or your first harrowing go
at blind man’s bluff. When they say Cypresses
are nice, and evergreen, this is a massive misnomer:
in domesticated form, their foliage only exists
to shake down the sun if it tries to evade
a real no-man’s-land of overlain boughs.
We rested the straightest sticks we could find
to make a roof for the tomb, then, in semi-
resignation already, floated funeral roses
of paddock grass on top: a chance attempt
at warming thatch. The poor dog rejected the whole
proposition outright, tumbling most of the roof
structure down upon her frantic back
during a scurried, instantaneous scramble out.
Here was the shortest-lived of many efforts
to make something habitable out of monument.
It was a huge, overwashing relief for us,
walking out again from under the Cypresses’ function:
its powerful message to the barbarian enemies
of mixed-use farmland, of animal husbandry in general.
Instead, back to open plains: a freezing, uproarious wind,
and an almost oneiric morning sun, rebuffed,
but half-heartedly, by sets of pillowy palms.
- 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