Stem cells
all on their own achieve
a rapture.
Hung from a feather,

a soft noose.
It’s never too late
to cut me down.

Midwinter—rainwater, and the quick running creek; how we trudged down the hill towards it.   Sunlight falls through jarrah, gilding the gravel track, and glints off the gully’s eddying fjord.   Some way off, upstream, there’s a bridge across the creek; a log we’d balance on, all but airborne.   Gazing into the silt-rich stream as far as light allowed, trembling depths turned mirror,   where the moon might appear in any cloudy noon, a drifting ghost, or petal; poetry.   Another metamorphosis in memory— the creek, speaking its tongues into my sleep.   Tannin, cold water’s fall and flood-rushing […]

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

A calf had slipped the loose-strung wire,
and the herd in committee milled close
as if to reabsorb him, a mercury drop.

All those hominids stood around to watch, scratching their heads and hairy armpits. So like them it was, well, sort of but ever so puny, while more or less pink.   Was this bod something to do with a future? Maybe the rich grasses and coconuts had a kind of blessing to grant him; nightshade and garlic somehow shield him from the big cats’ ravenous prowling.   They wondered what it could possibly grow into, from this pipsqueak. But something or other was in the balmy air.   They didn’t have a word for gods, not the merest monosyllable, but […]

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Upright like a rocket in scaffolds,
the catalytic cracker—
tearer of molecule
from molecule
in catastrophic heat—
megalithic, dinosauric.