by Lucy Norton 

patrilineal

dreamt you were a poem 
i kept writing you
if i am alive it means
parts of you are still

dreamt you were an ocean
i kept being afraid of you
if i am alive it means
i am here to reunite
ghosts of lineage past

what would it mean for them 
to taste freedom? 
shackles look different
but i know yours because
they became mine
we both had pain to run from
you just got away first 

i am choosing to run towards
instead
create a new legacy
one you might’ve wanted
to inherit
to give to us

you were second last 
of your brothers 
to die
but the first 
to put up a fight

dreamt you were a story
i’ll keep writing you

her waters 

our rivers call me by names
i haven’t heard before
arms extending across
mouth and state and sea
gentle pull at my seams
gotta unravel to hear ‘em

ocean is loudest when 
i’m coastal can’t go 
anywhere without 
hearing her song

mama says when you 
become water you will sail 
sometimes i’m done fighting
to float feels like birthright 
i am a willing participant 
this is a devotion i belong to

Lucy Norton is a storyteller of Koori & Quechua heritage living on Gadigal land. Her work explores lived experience, and aims to navigate the complexities of relationality and memory. They're a recipient of the Varuna First Nations Fellowship 2023, Red Room Emerging Poet's Residency 2024 and their work has been published in kindling & sage, Sunder Journal and Right Now Magazine.

by Damien Becker

Jesus, late

of Mater Hospital South Brisbane
entrance, was carved with a chainsaw, 
hewn from the safety of bark casting

by steel cutter teeth, further detailed 
with a chisel, gouge and bent, then
sanded back to prayer. 

We love complaints! reads the poster 
on the wall behind the messiah
as opportunities to learn. 

Car lights exiting the underworld 
parking on their way to West End 
flash through the stained glass

of the empty chapel behind the vending machine
and those spirits are moving through 
and over me, my bald head the Sacré-Cœur

Montmartre disco ball on a Saturday night. 
I wander the pews, rest to hang myself 
over in service to oxygenation, in-patient

mirror of His attendant curve. We 
share air in the dry silence, neither 
with anything to say, His cheeks stained 

with rose wax, mine paled with deficiency, 
flow sapped. A revelation: I consider 
anointing my forehead with Coke Zero 

in supplication, but I am shy with 
total strangers and anyhow, my Father 
is calling me from Melbourne to talk footy. 
​
Damien Becker is a disabled writer and community development worker from Murwillumbah NSW on Bundjalung Country. An award-winning spoken word artist, his poetry has been published by Australian Poetry Journal, Verity La, Bramble Journal, and Sunder Journal, among others. He lives with cystic fibrosis and is a double-lung transplant recipient.