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). 

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.

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.