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From: Vol.07 N.01 – Plant Poetics

not all invasions

by Magdalena Ball

the wind is blowing again

ash on dead grass

a dry invasion, portent

 

species gone wrong

tall, ugly, denying fact

floating on every ocean

littering the sky, the earth writhes

 

an era of annihilation

sating hunger at the expense

of other species: bird, reptile, insect

 

a continuum the plants didn’t predict

harvesting carbon dioxide

making loam

 

red moon

blood moon

 

we thought they could be gentle

they could, they weren’t

clumsy, angry, stupid

it was unexpected

shifting the ecosystem

 

picking flea beetles

from dying, laced up leaves

setting fire for spite

dying for fun

 

we loved them we loved

them, we waited for carbon

symbiosis, the bloom

the flowering

 

but they were

uncultured, too fast

too rough, and we were

too soft.

Published: March 2020
Magdalena Ball

is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader.  She has been widely published in journals and anthologies and is the author of several published books of poetry and fiction, most recently High Wire Step (Flying Island), and Unreliable Narratives (Girls on Key).

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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