Jackson

How does it feel, balancing on crammed / paws, coated / in killed fibres, lurching on two / long stilts, / your boulder head trying to fly? // How does it feel, sleeping in nests / so enormous and uncamouflaged, / so closed, inert and thick that they block / the smell of the Earth,… Read more

… Humans kept him in a one-metre cage where he lived for two autumns, two springs. / Humans brought him edible pellets and shredded documents. … He made a warm familiar ratsmelling nest. / He stored some food for the winter. / He was a universe. / On the seventh day humans threw out everything… Read more

Thank you for your flesh / I hope / a prayer was / said for your software / as the abattoir crashed it / with an electric bolt, / unplugged it / with a blade // Thank you for your muscle / I hope a ritual / farewelled / your memory, the shape / of… Read more

Again I dreamed that complex edifice / For a while I’d had a bedsit in a rear wing / You locked your bike to a back-lane fence, / wended between outbuildings, climbed / fire escape, squirmed through window. Now // I was trying to move in to the top floor of the main block … Read more

Driving between Pinjarra and Dwellingup, between / wire-fenced paddocks, stubble, wan dead logs, / I thought, what am I doing here? What am / I doing here? Then I thought, // blasting along at twenty-five metres per second, / raising no visible dust where I touch the / tarmac … Read more

… She carried the box to my car / and got in the front to drive me home / It was part of the service / I screamed at her Kate! (her name / was Kate, like my yoga teacher) / Get out of my car! … Read more