To chew on grass in the sunshine. To lick at the yolks of eggs, or bright & fern-dappled sunlight out in the yard. The trees crack like whips & faraway the southerly, the change comes. It’s worst at night, beneath the porch, as the spin dryer hums & the gums drop leaves that flick at…

Betty Malvern with a bee. Here’s my sisterly path, the secret way. Through the woods, into the sunlight for a sec. Token uniform a spot of brown by the creek. Small whorls of dirt in the clear water, like washing a coffee cup first in a sink olf sudsy white, like a beach. Clouded eyes…

They don’t believe in fairies but I do. You don’t believe in fairies, do you? I have seen them, and you’re wrong. I’ll bide my time, until they all come back to visit. They like to hide inside jacaranda trees. I hear their cries in the purple flowers and the leaves. I think about lots…

The creek’s steam mingles with our gossip, picking apart other peoples’ reputations, as we do. The morning stream calls. I ran out of the house, missing the fern by millimetres. In a way this flood is funny. It washes so much of the year away. It’s as if we were caught stealing or smoking cigarettes,…

I can feel the nettle, stuck in my leg, this remnant of Nebo’s glory, shoved deep inside my thigh, and poisoned too. I can just imagine the swelling there, and the pain. Totally worth it. An opportunity I’d never had before In the field. The perfect ambush. No Sound save for the odd raindrop. Op.†…

The school yard’s dense with bodies BUT I CAN’T HEAR A THING. No need to shout, a corona’s hanging around her head. The silence of summer. Here we go, across the iron bridge and onto the sports oval. Grass whistle. I’m still asleep. Memory tastes of Vita Brits. Something snaps in my ear as† the…

You know it’s just that every day this wave of International Roast it just hits me, in the common room, and I want to run. I see a pile of papers that may never get marked, handwritten notes, attendance rolls, and I just want to bolt. I navigate classrooms, listen to the bells but† it’s…

By American Creek there’s a fig tree with someone’s name written on its trunk. I hesitate to say mine. Okay, yes. In some fit of adolescent vanity I carved the initials RM there one day, after school. Never have gone back to look at it. What would be the point? Just a memory now, like…

i. By American Creek there’s a fig tree that’s been chopped off at the waist. Nothing but a brown stump remains. it’s the reason for my suburb’s name. & as for mine, you ask? Ralph will do. Mr Malvern to their friends at school. I watch them walk down O’Brien’s Rd. Reflected in the Fairlane’s…