Published in Overland Issue 218 Autumn 2015 · Uncategorized Be were: third place, Judith Wright Poetry Prize Kia Groom tonight the pigment will rise through your skin, form in fawn formations deer: your stockinged shanks hang now from half- open window & you slough off loose shoe it was a slow summer but now i crown you in the backseat: destructive diadem nestled in the thorns of your hair, stuck in a swollen wound that seeps a stream of blood i take it, what i’m owed, & crickets kiss your split lips with their sound: oh, whittled girlhood oh, crust of mud that shapes a foot to hoof. the sun sets on your thighs. you stumble out & eyes abandon pigment: sclera floods dark oil & in the road deer: you break open your insides burst with fur i want to plunge my hand inside again & taste beast coronation it was a slow summer but now i pick fine hairs from between teeth & watch you frail shake on roadside gore & glisten of damp girl & dearest that’s the thing, with men we always forget, when hunting for blood, first: flesh. Kia Groom Kia Groom grew up in Perth and is slated to graduate from the University of New Orleans in May, with an MFA in poetry. She is founding editor of Quaint Magazine, dedicated to subversive work from female-identified and non-binary writers. Her work has appeared in Going Down Swinging, Westerly and Cordite. She is online at www.kiagroom.com, and tweets at @whodreamedit. More by Kia Groom › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 22 November 202422 November 2024 · Fiction A map of underneath Madeleine Rebbechi They had been tangled together like kelp from the age of fourteen: sunburned, electric Meg and her sidekick Ruth the dreamer, up to all manner of sinister things. So said their parents; so their teachers reported when the two girls were found down at the estuary during a school excursion, whispering to something scaly wriggling in the reeds. 21 November 202421 November 2024 · Fiction Whack-a-mole Sheila Ngọc Phạm We sit in silence a few more moments as there is no need to talk further; it is the right place to end. There is more I want to know but we had revisited enough of the horror for one day. As I stood up to thank Bác Dzũng for sharing his story, I wished I could tell him how I finally understood that Father’s prophecy would never be fulfilled.
