Without fail each month

The gathering within the cave

The wet echo of excited whispers

Darkness and dankness

Woollen blankets, candles

Soft slurp of corks being pulled

Candle flames appear like glow worms

Tonight the ritual has run too long

The wine has run too freely

Pale flesh upon wool slumbering

In the stillness before dawn

I take the boat, find the air

Clear, still, silent, deep

Moonglow on my skin

But you call my name

A glow worm bobs at the cave mouth

I row back to you

Published on the Ekphrastic Review July 2023

the sky was blue only yesterday

the grass blindingly green

now there’s a space

where you were

heart hurt has bleached the colours

from the sky, the grass, my joy

even the clouds pull away

the lilac skies

stroked in sorrow

Featured on Reverie Journal’s Instagram August 2023

You wore black to my wedding

Midnight silk shot with turquoise and amethyst

A dark flower haunting the

Spring bouquet of pastel-robed ladies

They took me from my father’s home

Customary to cry out, protest, shriek

No play acting required on my part,

The transaction not of my choosing

Upon entering his home

I was to call out the traditional

Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia

But I glanced back, and saw you

Stooped, to pick up a fallen flower

Cheeks, and eyes reddened

Creamy shoulder exposed

Sorrow writ large across your face

Upon entering his home

I called out, while looking back,

Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaia

Where you are, there am I.

Published on the Ekphrastic Review September 2023

My spoon is clenched in my fist, cornflakes milk-sogged and forgotten

I can’t eat while I count the gun shots. That’s nine, no, ten.

Ten sheep, I tell my mother. She’s leaning over the kitchen sink

staring out at the long yellow stretch of paddocks,

the empty blue of the sky.

Heavy boots are kicked off onto the verandah. A dog yelps, a door slams.

Can I come out with you today? I ask my father, as he wipes his hands

You’re going to school and no arguments, my mother says.

At bedtime I lie awake and listen—no crickets, no frogs, no night birds,

 the dark is so silent my ears hurt.

What’s daddy doing? I ask my mother the next morning

He’s out in the yards, his arms spread along the timber fence

Your father’s praying in his own way, my mother says from the sink

She’s not washing up, just staring out at the yellow and blue

I’m not going to school today, I tell her, pulling on my boots.

The top fence rail is too high, but the middle rail is just right

I spread my own arms out, a splinter silently needles my palm.

My father puts his hand on mine; it’s rough and warm as leather

Then we stand and pray in our own way—

that morning there are no gun shots to count.

Three bedtimes after, there’s a noise in the dark, a plink-plink-plink

The plinks turn to sploshes, then a drumming on the roof

Thankgodthankgodthankgod, my father hollers—

He is dancing my mother around the yard,

her nightie heavy and wet.

(Winner of the Bookness Poetry Prize 2024)