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Unsettled in Cheltenham: October 16th

David Mortimer

Winter 2016

 

Wattlebirds and honeyeaters are crazed
With bottlebrush madness in the evening breeze
And after-dinner warmth and light and height
Of multidimensional carpet flung and warped
Through pools of space and archipelagos of air
Against blue or green or grey-green, red and cream
Against black and grey hallucinogenic high-relief
Where soon the socialist bees will come to collect
And get dragged dying by totalitarian ants
For now the new-born specks of flight are nectar-drunk
And far too small to achieve the freight of punctuation
As even the tiniest of full stops, let alone inverted commas

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The next edition of Meanjin will be available from December 2026. Information on the purchase of single editions – in print or ePub formats – will be available closer to time.

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  • In Print
  • Online Only
    • Latest Pieces
    • Reading Trails
    • What I’m Reading
  • Read
    • The Meanjin Papers
    • Poetry
    • Essays
    • Fiction
    • Memoir
    • The Meanjin Interviews
    • Experiments
    • State of the Nation
    • The Year In…
  • Books
    • Reviews
    • Australia in Three Books
    • What I’m Reading
  • Writers
    • Interviews
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