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From: Vol.10 N.01 – The Transformative Now

dear being

by Cindy Botha
sometimes I chew off my hand
to be a fox 
without options
white bone snagged 
in steel

sometimes I’m the smashed 
teeth 
of a waning moon- 
bear 
the bile-cannula, its sick agony

the perpetual cage

or a panting shark in fin-less 
freefall
dull ingot, ribboning blood
unblinking
sometimes I’m the deep 

embezzled blue

a rhino stunned by the absent 
weight
of a horn
the sudden inimical gravity
her frantic calf

sometimes I cradle the veal-
orphan 
am the crate 
the size of its life
both of us 

so fucking lost
Published: June 2023
Cindy Botha

was born in Kenya, grew up in South Africa and now lives in Tauranga, New Zealand. She began writing at nearly 60, and has since been published internationally. She was awarded first place in the Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Prize 2020 and her work appears in two anthologies of ecopoetry: Poetics for the More-Than-Human World, Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, USA, and No Other Place To Stand, An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry, AUP, New Zealand.

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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