To avoid treading on a snake, I stepped on a land mine. Did this really happen, in my dream? No. Is it a fiction, then? Yes and no. The time I spend looking for socks is insignificant: lie, irony, or philosophy? Wombats shit candy. Joke – hallucination? This is in fact a truth claim. My poems: litanies of truth claims.

This summer I can feel myself turning back into an animal. I wake up early and seek out trees, walking through the expansive quiet of the park until the heat starts feeling sharp on my skin. I leave the blinds closed, so when I return home the building is dark and familiar, and as I shut the door behind me I feel a satisfaction I can only describe as territorial.

Words collected from ‘It’s so hip to be black’ by Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 15 April 2009. Meet now Wiradjuri Country. Auburn and charmingly freckled Country. Fair open air and Swallow Country. Take-me-as-I-am naked Country.

They argued over the correct way to drain the sink. A chocolate cake buckled under the strain of their indifference to one another. To put it another way, my coffee came a little late—the kitchen was open and large slices of carrot toppled off the chopping board stopping-up doors that had yet to inherit knobs.

dream’s letterhead lies exhausted in the recycling bin    someone is so awake to the moment    the black opulence of the room at 4am    a hello new day screen lights up    bulletins of hydrated

I lost sleep last night—so tired my head is a potato. My life was always art, but work made it dirt. Is life always dirt? I lost my night working potatoes. A tired head, but my last sleep was art. My part is in. A new bearing from which thick plants bud. Much depression arises from the underground.

For a while I pick the glass Out of her hair, which is gorgeous—Ombre peach and gold. She holds my hand and won’t agree. I leave her in front of the tobacconist, Full of the language of murder.

cull Monday CULL barb drinks burden sass MONDAY mouths burn BARBURDENODE DRINKSASSYRUPS node syrups MOUTHSHOTROPES shot nooses tropes’ suds BURNOOSESUDS gunned rope SUNGUNNEDRUM BESTIROPEPARCH sung bestir NOWISETICLEAVE drum eparch

as if numbers can measure how dark immigrant skin is dark enough to be blue under strobe lights carnivorous jellyfish dirt-brown blood an ignition of nightmares & sweat

Sitting on a bench in Central Park, it’s a Friday afternoon in spring and I’m thinking thoughts in waves, like: just because she’s masc doesn’t mean she’ll top you and perhaps I’d be happier if I was eating a canelé.

I am a Kennedy says Eileen, blue black eyes gleaming. The homeless are raised up, the lonely head for shelter in a theatre basement with 1000 women and children. We are a security council and I am your President. They will break the mould after me.

When iso’s over I’m buying a coleslaw handfuls of nectarines, vanilla pudding to keep the lockdown woes at bay, I’m kinda worried not rly because I’ve got the spicy cough you know, I’m young – no underlying conditions but my brother has spent the past week in emergency

I have watched the 1OUTS rap battle video 2SHAE VS SNIPES, so many times. I’ve watched and re-watched it with old friends. I’ve shown it to new friends from different parts of Australia and the world. A friend from Brisbane recently noted that every time my group of friends from Melbourne hang out, the Snipes video […]

I wake up, standing to a horizontal glare in eyes I can’t remember shutting on a platform at a station of a line that must be elsewhere Where the night chill pricks like daybreak a helium confusion at being alive and born clothed

We wake by still water to what sounds like a large pearl dropped from a great height, it breaks the surface tension with a resonant nasal tock more than a splash. A lake is an inland expanse of standing water. This one is nine hundred and sixty-three metres above sea level.