Publications and Writing Samples
Published Work:
- "Bellying Up", The Sprawl Mag Vol. 1.1, October 2022
- Stem to Sternum, Bookleaf Publishing, January 2022
- "2 am in the greenhouse we call bed", PACE Magazine, August 2018
- "January 3, 12.56 a.m. (I will love you one day)", The Red Book, June 2017
- "Conversations with Stone Women", The Red Book, June 2017
- "After I Fell For You", Pot-Pourri, September 2014
Writing Samples
Defining The Word Wanting
I suck on a rag dipped in anaesthetic.
That’s what we call it, now, at least.
The birds are back, breaking the glass
with their small ribcages, their dollhouse bones,
as if in heat, as if in protest,
as if they are the predators
of their ancestry. It’s loud,
like something to fear
in that way that makes us believe
in a predisposition to faith.
I never knew where to look,
I’d end up drinking the stillness in.
The leaves knew what to say,
the lustre of blood,
a dance in the moonlight,
my smaller body leaning
towards the stardust
and coughing up bile.
my feet turn to ash on the road.
I stare at the man who says prayers
as if to make a difference
in the shape of the words.
He scoops me up, hand around my legs.
I lean my head on his shoulder,
watch the road bounce out of view.
I am deposited in bed.
I will learn I cannot climb
in this hallowed space, it’s something
artless, something I wouldn’t mind.
By the way, it’s all a lie.
I think it is, at least,
because it happened where the pavement
becomes altar, and the farmhouse
is swallowed by the man
to a different kind of god.
and rabbit caught out back,
and the mangy cats
sparkling their eyes up the walkway,
as if embarrassed to show us their starving spines.
It wasn’t a childhood
unscathed. But it wasn’t
at war, and we never knew
where the animals took their older bodies
when they left this place behind.
It was as close as we could get
to church. Not that there wasn't
a church, there is,
the beetles with our hands, but the water
takes what it wants. It always will.
After that time, after we knew
how to build pyres,
how to harvest garlic,
that was the place we knew
how to build out of old bones.
It was a horror movie, I would say,
and laugh, and wince. We’ve all been dead
But it’s not new, it’s been marching
through the pasture
ever since we could see that far.
I can follow all of it,
any curves or hills that make
the map different year to year.
My eyes can only take in so much:
growing moss between the houses,
our toes stuck with soot.
We keep score by our own count.
We own the rules. We hunt them back,
but each new name is more confusing than the last,
we spin in place, I try to learn to read
the epitaphs of women watching
our mosquito legs, the soles
of our small and flashing feet.
It’s not shameful. It feels shameful,
everything coloured through the lens of heat,
something about nature versus nurture.
my strands of briar hair. We sank
to our knees on the black tar,
the dog holding our gaze,
it all happens in an instant, doesn’t it?
Maybe you’re right.
Maybe my short fingers
would never reach the crocodiles,
swinging their tails, receding,
but who’s to say? I don’t like
to make words of that story.
I was a bloodied day,
but at the end of it, we weren’t.
I think that that was everything,
the gravel drive, the red mailbox,
a woman smoking, standing,
calling my name, and my short limbs