Intrusion

They came
With the ocean, carried on the waves,
They came
With loud voices that cracked through the bush,
They came
With guns and nothing was safe,
They came
With strange animals and let them roam,
They came
With axes and hacked and chopped,
They came
With greed and nothing was sacred,
They came
Without asking and offered no apology,
They came
With no white flag and expected surrender,
They came


Rachel McEleney (Western Australia)

Mandatharra

on the road to the vanishing point
we layered our story
over the Inggarda stories

ice age, crinoids, early
Permian, ancient sea bed,
quartzblow, sandstone
plateau, elevated,
compressed, faulted,
uplifted

on the road of smashed bones
corpses unburied
spat to the side
the road of sliced rubber
we picked up Daniel
his tyre the road’s latest meal
out there on the horizon
heat turns distance to water
and waves
we asked what do you call the blue smudge
map-named for a pastoralist’s wife

in his grandmother’s country
he can’t say
he can’t say
he can’t say the name

on the road to the vanishing point
the road of broken bones and sliced rubber
our tongues strangle names
he can.


Coral Carter (Western Australia)

weeds

supplicant green
tip to eager root/gloved hand

complete

like a slammed door/dead phone/totalled car

weeds spread quietly

while you sleep/stare at weave
in an office partition/wipe dust from a desk phone

on your way by goldfish sunrise
green under bike wheel

weeds stretch wide loop tight
knit into more

in the slide of a month
so many/so many

they begin to look
like they have design
logic
knowing


Alice Allan (Victoria)