I pushed through the spinifex
behind the native police,
noon rinsing my shadow into naught,
a magpie calling as if calling were any use,
and what unwound in the gully I have not
the words for: the sum of souls uncounted,
arranged by no one, by everyone,
by the long sentence of the colony
reaching through my arm,
my notebook, my civil tongue,
the bitterness in my mouth.

The creek lay dry as the colony’s mercy.
Children’s teeth devouring the red dirt.
The soft architecture of a knee displaced.
Flies thick as a second skin upon the seeing.
I tell myself I only watched.
The country watched me back and would not blink,
would not absolve the horror in the gorge,
the sun a golden witness pressed flush against the sky,
and somewhere inside my rattling chest a door
I had not known was there swung open
onto a crying room I will visit, unfinished,
all my days of conscription.

 

2/5/2026