Can you convince the wind to change
direction? The Opera House dishes in their rack
are browning again. The government wants them whitewashed
by massive, shock-jock-endorsed horse-racing ads.
It’s nearly summer and November’s going loopy.The sky turns ochre, orange to some, amid purple-greys—
depends on the screen you see things through
and whether or how you recall the dust-red dawn
of 2009 that loomed over the Blue Mountains
from the southwest like something sci-fi,how it crept in the early hours into the city in slow motion
the way a red container ship now glides as if on ice
over choppy waters under the Harbour Bridge.
Today’s another ‘scary fire day’. People are out and amongst it,
spending everything on Xmas, dealing with the traumaof a year’s overload. The sun’s not a sphere,
it’s a funnel that sucks the world’s energy up like a vacuum,
spits it back out in shards of light or in hard
slabs of heat the size of continents.
Wind drags dust from inland out through the heads,Country in its teeth. When the dust-red dawn
dwarfed Sydney it was much redder than this
orange-grey haze people are dissing on the tweets
like it’s nothing, like there aren’t still tonnes
of it settling on every windowsill, millionsof airborne specks turning sinuses to rage.
As a two-year-old, Evie was afraid of specks;
couldn’t comprehend them. She used to point and scream
at any tiny fleck invading her bath-time and -space—
they were alive, could morph into other forms.Or maybe she understands them too well, how our bodies
are always morphing. She’s been watching
Alice in Wonderland—‘a big girl now,’ not a dot
inside a tummy anymore, and difficult to allegorise,
given our background in colonial poiesis.The sound of an invisible cannon-shot thunders
and echoes from the sandstone and concrete
beneath the bridge on the northern side of the harbour,
dragging me back to the steering wheel I’ve drifted off behind
on the southern side as I take a break from deliveries.Twenty more bangs go off and, with each, a further
twenty echoes are delayed by what seems
two hundred years or more. Sky turns maroon.
Through the windscreen, a dirty rainbow.
On the road, red’s caked in the puddles of this morning’srainshower. How do I talk to my daughters
about all the tiny beliefs being part of the big ones,
about tipping points that have already been breached,
about the version of history they’ll inherit
that can’t go back to time immemorial and that’llprobably soon completely cease reverberating
through the future’s waters? The car shakes. Wind
lifts the sedan, spinning me up to the palm tree canopies
and for a moment we’re all doing helicopters—
fronds, hair, car, heads, arms (I imagine my daughtersairborne too)—dispersing dust, trying to shake it off.
I return to land, watch the specks we picked up
get whisked over Gadigal and out to sea,
tiny flecks of red and black subsumed back in-
to the ongoing fallout and wash-up.
- 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