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From: Vol.05 N.02 – Make It So

Guidelines

by Adam Stokell

Given hundred-watt vulnerability of anything furred and
pouched on the block to surreptitious rifle-fire popping in from
just over the humpty fenceline where neighbours god love ‘em
are graziers

given bicentennial proclivity of said stalwarts to cram lumed
ute when pissed and bored and take up arms against ‘stray’
marsupials pestering local sheepwrecked paddocks with their
pangs and who’d have thunk finding none left turn lit attention
to these acres ‘let go to ruin’ where said pouched mammals still
dare being not sheep

given sorta faunal terra nullius kinda still winks at culling by
said salts of the earth just making an honest living a bit of
harmless fun ensuring easeful sleep

given proposed ‘watering down’ of already dispirited State gun
laws will permit said pillars to deploy even musclier rifles
replete with kid you not silencers

given scarcity of living khaki words to work with along said
arid fenceline consonants to coax into scratchy verses of
bracken sagg prickly Moses casuarina obfuscating all that hops
within

given no rain nor standing water nor urine sufficient to utter
dream-words dense and drippingly blind as blackwood swamp
gum silver wattle native cherry

concoct scrummed enjambement of dry spent words all slipped
bark dropped branches dangerously anted twigs a screen of
nonplus drab as Latin woven and stacked and casting a profane
spell of cover across said margin like an iron curtain or if you
prefer a text

Published: July 2018
Adam Stokell

Adam Stokell’s poems have appeared in several Australian journals, most recently in Cordite, Meanjin and Pink Cover Zine. His first poetry collection will appear in September 2018 with A Published Event/The People’s Library. He lives at Slopen Main on the Tasman Peninsula.

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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