In wombhole I meet feathered oracle, cross-legged and knowin’

tells me I know nothin’ of time. “Listen ’ere Sis, don’t waste it

it’s slippin’ by while yous humans fuck everythin’ up”

Languorin’ now by springtime wound

swimmin’ where the light enters, warns me

when sun lays horizontal on graves dusk heavy

her coeval nebula will then be callin’ home.

Before flight takes her, sends me down to Aunty

Wandaiyalle by South Wall

where we could be ibis stalkin’

through misty antediluvian

newspaper headlines yellin’

but nobody listenin’

Women Of So-called ‘Nation’ Most Unsafe In Own Homes 2022

This ’er now time where violent men be fresh

not fettered by polite free-market-gentlemanry

still as if only yesterday ’im did not sin

as if gods had not forsaken all

and gifted ’im incentives to be satan

incentives to be takin

’em women and fashionin’ wives of ’em

make slaves of love and motherhood

sculpt warrior sons of rape in own image

At Cooee Corner tawnied Perry starts tellin’ me

at so-called start of time, the poet commences his

most laborious work yet curatin’ that ancient lie in gibberish

that mud-fucked biblical tome now weighs heavy through the ages

laid cross-breast first white child born in place renamed Baulkham Hills,

still cryin’ tears for years for knowin’ black girl’s body stolen

stretched tight by rope and tree for cryin’ too much

left to be dead in mornin’

“Them are sandstone body” he says, “them are granite tears

no guilt enough for wipin’, repentance be a loomin’”

Earth (noun) /əːθ/

1. a cupped-palm-shaped reminder

coffin and body no matter size or colour return to nothing.

I find black, blue butcher George

rat rat rat break nuttin’ graves

see him sorrow-laden, ask Uncle if somethin’ I should carry

“Nah darlin’ daughter, it’s just this Christian burial

there’s still a hope I’ll soon be restin’ home

might be change a comin’”

I meet Magpie Mogo by Master Mitchell Massacre’s mausoleum

shit’s still tended by Institute of Surveyors NSW Division

What a fuckin’ pioneer of terra nullius

of land mob be intimate with each grain of sand

used mob to survey what ’im couldn’t and killed ’em when ’em

wouldn’t “True” he says, “that there delicious entropy craftin’

masterpiece of planet and homo sapiens

another Dark Ages of own makin’

steppin’ up for audition

just for yous creatures of extinction

while monarchs take standing ovations

a moment’s silence, please, for two centuries of oppression”

At twilight, me check wombhole and she, augury, be gone

our feathered and oracled universe now far away

cryin’ out in elemental labour, heavy breathin’ heat and life

into new black and whitefulla

hear her cacklin’ song

“that was fuckin’ interestin’”