The Many Places I Call Home




i am drip-dried chapped-lipped

dusty dropping tracks i

am hot explosion bottlebrush

my snowdrop songs wilt in aromatic

eucalypt i am parched wood and charred

tree trunks perennial red dust beneath

your fingernails i am dry creeks birds

that cry whiplash & rainbow-backed

beetles that visit when evenings

are longer than the shadows

i am wellingtons thick with mud

stiff fingers dirt disbanded

into the creases blackberry juice

staining cracked lips nose nibbled by

frost i am grit salt grabbing onto potholed

tar frigid air puffed around yellow

street lamps puddles dribbling

into my socks settling icy into wellies

too big little legs swallowed as though

by the tannery caves of Nottingham

i am a product of grace and a survivor

of tales you wouldn’t believe i am beaten

until colourful i am scarred beyond

recognition i am boxed in & stretched out

& grateful to people whose names

i do not remember there are things i

cannot recall except in terrors that

overtake me in the dark i am a product

of trauma & love & i do not know

what i am called to do except to live




Grandmother




baju,

i call you crackled sediment

between a crescent and tusked

roamers. you hum birdsong

and scrape sunrise

from your eyelids. you

understand time because the teeth

you lost smatter

hardened ridges and wizened

foliage so deep even sun

light will not glare.




Place Where The Sea Makes A Noise




mottled sunkiss glimmers past wiggly bark glancing into my eyes hazel glows toward end of Country

roar and foamy thunder salted wind brushes my skin bush rustles in tune with chuckling kookaburras

ancestral dust spreads between my curled toes as i approach the brink of this land i am stolen by the

oceans’s breath where mountains touch the sea