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From: Vol.11 N.01 – Queering Ecopoet(h)ics

Birthday Letter 

by Michelle Cahill
For Taron
I put my hands among the flames.  Nothing burns.
– Sylvia Plath, ‘Poppies in July’
sunset dyes the cliffs orange, 
                                  their reason
is something delicate as a blue wren’s song
when i feed the wallabies carrots they clash,
            like acrobats, bouncing off the red earth.

soon it will be time to light a fire, cook soup,
kiss the cold wind,
       to spend an hour trying to capture 4G,
as the sad android icon regrets
           ‘a network change detected’
calmed by ambient light,
                                  not yet understanding
           this splitting, part decay,     part bloom,
           but here’s an emoji, a link, & a password
             to zoom at 7pm EST

spend hours watching wind-slicked flames,
           branches shrivel to marble, to ash,
           as the violet evening graces
                                 with cicada empathy,
           shy wood moths in pipe-cleaner trees,
           this is what i do,
collect cloud artefacts, worth a look,

red-flecked acacias,
                        acrylic lichens on a rotting log
            where a fiddler beetle lays her eggs,

crimson sea fig shocks like Plath’s ‘hell flames’

rainbow day of their birth 19 years ago—the backwash
            and undertow dragging sand from the dunes,
            where i photo-text,
            our signal erratic as the southern sea
Published: April 2024
Michelle Cahill

(she/they) is a Goan-Anglo-Indian poet and author, artistic director at Mascara Literary Review and last year’s Hedberg Writer-in-Residence at UTAS. Her latest book Daisy & Woolf (Hachette, 2022) longlisted in the Voss Literary Prize and the ALS Gold Medal, Letter to Pessoa (Giramondo, 2016) received the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing. Blaze is forthcoming with Cordite Books.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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