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Special N.02 – Poets speak up to Adani

DIG & Nightwork

by Bonny Cassidy

 

 

DIG

 

In the pan your gravels crashing hatched their prize—

a brindle rush to hump my veins and fever up the leaf

that twisted in our fields. The guilt was white, my soul a sieve.

It boomed with bull to see the dust an avenue of spin—

and my brickhouse hazy as a reef, its aura built to scale.

I seemed to tap its skin.

Birth was the pits but this is mine. Rabbits swimming to shake my mitts.

 

 

 

Nightwork

  

A conveyor belt reaping into action, cries

 

rubbish rocks rubbish rocks

 

breaks up floodlight, its flesh

a stingray covered, uncovered.

 

Pandanus leans

magic, enters the bulldozer

rearing

its tyres dissolve

 

as from the rocks and rubbish

the camera conveys

 

one kid

naked and furiously sweeping

a path through reeds, pandanus

shaken

entranced

 

by the trucks and manganese

at her feet.

 

The old men spin like tyres covered, uncovered.

 

It’s the sixties, then it isn’t.

From Chatelaine (Giramondo, 2017). ‘DIG’ was first published in Blackbox Manifold Issue 14. ‘Nightwork’ was first published in Cordite Poetry Review Issue 44.

Published: August 2022
Bonny Cassidy

is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Chatelaine (Giramondo, 2017). She coedited the anthology, Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (Hunter Publishers, 2016) and is Feature Reviews Editor for Cordite Poetry Review. Bonny leads the BA Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne.

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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