by Mark O'Flynn
for Kate Fagan Against the empty storm clouds those white cockatoos like rents in canvas drift through the air left by fire. The clean sheets of their wings vivid as charcoal on snow. Acoustic cries fill the ashen void between scorched tree and leaden sky. They strip the blackened bark like metal at a car wreck fossick with primitive impatience on the verge of food. What language do they croak? what devious vernacular of proclamation and waste? Arranged phonetically with blundering morphemes like hacksaws grumbling through the air’s dirty paragraph. You lean from your window oppressed by rain as one stone age cockatoo in the face of desolation shrieks relentless greeting across the heavy sky hello hello hello. Mark O’Flynn’s novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon (UQP) was short listed for the Miles Franklin Award, 2017, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award as well as winning the Voss Literary Award, 2017. His most recent collection of poetry is Undercoat (Liquid Amber Press, 2022).
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by Leni Shilton White smoke in the trees lifts slowly, it weaves through the empty frames. They hang from the branches like mirrors. She hung them there looking for herself, her mother – for all the mothers. For the women who were once here she listens in the stillness for their voices. The smoke winds sleep-like from her campfire, drifting this side to that. She puts the billy to boil and the crack of flames is the only sound in the wide yawn of quiet. A honeyeater alights on a frame its call startled and loud, the whole forest alert watching for the smoke. The frames rock in the breeze. Unblinking eyes capturing the forest, the birds the distance. She paints late into the day forgetting herself until the sun drops, the cold comes in. As the light lowers, she walks about reaches into trees collecting frames. They clatter into her bag, into darkness like eyes closing. She empties the billy onto dry leaves, breathes in eucalyptus. She packs away her paintings her paints, the perfect blend of green, of grey. She tips water on the campfire steps back from the blast of steam. The last of the coals scattered, she heaves bags on her shoulder trudges up the creek bed, feet slipping in the dry sand. Behind her, the forest is itself again No frames to look through, no fire or smoke just itself for a thousand miles, stretching and shaking in the breeze. Leni Shilton is a poet and verse novelist. Her book Walking with camels won the 2020 NT Chief Ministers Book Award. Leni’s poetry work appears in journals and anthologies, and she judged the 2020 Stella Prize. After many years in Mparntwe | Alice Springs, she now lives on Dja Dja Wurrung country. Image credit Pam French
Fowlers Gap/Broken Hill area, acknowledging the Wilyakali/Wijaali peoples Poem from exhibition: Mother Mother with my sister, visual artist Pam French Newstead Arts Hub, Newstead, Victoria, Dja Dja Wurrung Country, 5-27 October 2024 by Allison Camp Ode to the corpse “The Dermestid Beetle, sometimes referred to as a carpet or skin beetle, belongs to the family Dermesidate. This beetle species feeds on dry-moist animal material, ensuring that decaying and dead flesh is recycled. Invariably these beetles will show up at a carcass to aid in decomposition…” -Skull Taxidermy My dear, cold dead damp rotting at roadside, a generous splay. Your sweet stench lures me. Intoxicating cadaverine and putrescine, pungent perfume which I fancy ambergris envies. My probing mouth lovingly caresses each metacarpal, vertebral arch. No pulp evades my insatiable maw. My wormy form burrows under your fur in gluttonous consumption. A grotesque Hungry Caterpillar. Your crevices are scraped clean in my wake, elegant bones gleam white. Now, you are gone my decomposing darling. I will hide -- secret, sealed, corporeal melt, dream of decay. The circularity is not lost on me. Jumbled soup congeals, my form recombines, your muscle now mine. Spotted elytra and wings unfurl. I fly to find you again. Roadkill
more like murder via high-speed habitat intrusion more like killer road more like vehicular slaughter more like we kill anything that gets in our way more like paved graveyard more like corpse corridor more like a gruesome museum of local wildlife – mangled specimens only. Allison Camp (she/her) is a Washington State native now living and working in North Carolina. She is a scientist by training and has a deep affinity for biology and the fascinating details that abound in nature. Connect with her on Substack: https://allisoncamp.substack.com/ or Instagram: @eclectic.curiosity. by Paris Rosemont
Your little yuzu sapling should have tipped me off to your love of zest. You tended to it with the care and patience of a zen master cultivating inner peace. I have begun craving the tart tang of tangerine tickling my tastebuds, imagining you on my tongue as I dip into the pink flesh of a grapefruit wedge—sweet, bitter and sourish—bright as a sharp slap prickling pungent as smelling salts. My lips pucker as I suck the rind bare as my cunt—a slow kiss laced with a lick of vinegar. Love flays me—I tingle. My senses awaken to you; the blood orange dribbling acidic into each tiger stripe of my wounds. I become an ouroboros, consuming my own marrow, marinating in your secretions. I am raw—my translucent flesh transformed by the lime of your love. Paris Rosemont is the author of Banana Girl (WestWords, 2023), shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s 2024 Mary Gilmore Award for a first volume of poetry. Her second collection, Barefoot Poetess, is due for release in early 2025. Paris may be found at www.parisrosemont.com. |
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