Poem whose semiotics of arrival
in Bogan Town make a perfect
O-shaped hair doughnut peeling
off the scream with an interior
brush inside four windowless walls
(narrow-doored servant quarters)
in which I nurse a pair of llamas
with long-lashed eyes whom I met
as dolphins when I leapt from the dock
into their dreams, braving the dirty
foam-wracked waves without volition
as they swam into me to sup
as llamas on human milk
their sorrow part of whatever they sought,
still dolphins at heart, shapeshifters
who had foreseen beyond this dream
the draining of their sea. Fully awake
then for my first day of work in polo
shirt and tights, I am met
by a man beside my car
whipping a tree with his belt,
his visage a violent stew—
and I burn my fingers getting into
the car as his voice lays into two
small daughters on the curb in mini-
school skirts and bows, struck
to the quick that they must follow
this shout, who marches off
without looking behind him,
a pulse of hot concrete forcefully
threading his belt back in.
previously published
Best of Australian Poems 2021, Guest Editors Ellen Van Neerven & Toby Fitch, p. 169.
(This poem also received second prize in the 2021Â MPU Annual International Poetry Competition).
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