i. The Pig She has parked herself in the intersection of tracks under coconut palms. She looks about the size of a VW beetle if you allow a little exaggeration. When she walks, her belly waggles between her legs. From below, she looks well-used; but her back and sides have the black curve of a […]

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On 18 June 2010 Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a volunteer firing squad in Utah State Prison Not often you get a chance to kill a man No strings attached that is The opportunity of a lifetime Five volunteers make-up the party Names stay secret to keep wackos at bay We shoot from behind […]

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Yesterday, Sunday, a lazy day for an easy drive out over the smoke-blue haze of a tablelands autumn until a flash of headlights broke the spell to tell us an accident so bad, up ahead, we’d better find another way.   Working the gravel of another route, among the poplar-golds, their plumes in spilling cascades, […]

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A photo from the last days of the Reich: An old man with forage cap and arm-band Lifting a Panzerfaust, under the cold eyes Of instructors, readying for a final stand. From the east the Red Army is pouring in, From the West bombers blacken the sky. The men have makeshift uniforms and weapons And […]

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The waiter in Kalkan at a café overlooking the sea, the Mediterranean to be precise and a touch particular, the waiter asks, pointing to my diary, What you do in book? I show writing and the Blue Mosque quickly sketched in Istanbul. Ah, he says. Artist. He was kind. I go to art school for […]

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International Relations Another dull committee. A fire alarm needing new batteries releases a mournful chirp that echoes in the tiled halls, like birdsong in rainforest. They call on me to speak, and name me Australia. We discuss funding gaps and proportions of budget spend and instead of taking notes, I sketch plans for an orchard. […]

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Standing on her balcony, she’d rant down at our courtyard, You’re a nasty person, you’re very nasty, though she scarcely knew you. Stephanie was old and lived alone.  She had a screen of potplants by the railing; she fed them, spoke to them and watered them twice daily, which was chiefly when she opened up […]

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 Becoming My Mother I emerge from my disguise to be the daughter of my mother’s eyes not just in looks but in my mind: I wander on a nightly mission where I search to find words that make a poem. My mother seeks mobility in age just as it is leaving prowling her last freedoms […]

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Outside, the mesmerising leaves of summer fill the day with noise but I make none. Inside the house my life’s as quiet as a bicycle crossing a stretch of sand in southern Laos, or as comatose as people on a Stockholm bus. I know. I’ve heard them both.

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A man coughs like a box and turns on yellow light to follow his bladder out over the gunwale of his bed. He yawns upright trying not to dot the floor with little advance pees. The clock on the night-stand biting off an hour he hates. Sugar, the sick caterer managed with unzipping needles. Blood […]

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