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From: Vol.06 N.01 – The Everywhere of Things

rework

by Alison Whittaker

Pull over here, watch some spinning nightly fights reach

across a highway’s ribs. At the Kamiloroi Highway’s spine

two signs rise and speak and re-speak. Their slur contents impeach

a mountain feature to the west. Move your breath with its outline

 

at which some racing things have come to rest. Others trudge upon.

Ev’ry night, the sign decries ‘Gin’s Leap’; and it’s replied with scrawl.

On this site, dry cliff, all quiet: the blak re-namers brawlin’ on.

White ones sparring back. Write, revise revise revise revise revise the sprawl.

 

Winangala! Your feet depress land story-holdin’.

The sign-ribs come down, back up. It matters, the tale—

whose many versions woven?—woman flees marriage, woman’s child stolen.

Your engine paused. Its useless gasps all join the hale

 

with yours and theirs. See dawn emerge. Your windshield but filmed dust

Gin’s Leap de-signed, re-named again. As it must and as you must.

‘rework’ appears in Alison Whittaker, BLAKWORK (Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 2018). Reproduced here with permission of the author and Magabala Books.

 https://www.magabala.com/young-adult/blakwork.html

Published: January 2019
Alison Whittaker

is a Gomeroi poet and Senior Researcher at the Jumbunna Institute. She was a 2017-18 Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Alison’s second collection, BLAKWORK, was released in 2018 with Magabala Books and was shortlisted in the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

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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