34-37 Degrees South - 2023
This anthology from the South Coast Writers Centre presents fresh country poetry from emerging and award-winning local writers.
This anthology from the South Coast Writers Centre presents fresh country poetry from emerging and award-winning local writers.
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Funeral birds<br />
Alisha Brown<br />
There are six black cockatoos<br />
scattered through the squiggly gum<br />
that homesick siren screech<br />
sharpening my bones<br />
shaking the sun free from its rosy basket<br />
to yolk across the sky<br />
delightfully<br />
I’m not sure why people call them funeral birds<br />
when this is surely a wedding<br />
let me find my abalone earrings<br />
I wish to be an ornament atop morning’s mantelpiece<br />
another lucid dewdrop<br />
teasing colour from everything<br />
God! let me hold all of this –<br />
the birds, the sun<br />
and the crisp significance of it all—<br />
within a finite<br />
sort of intimacy<br />
The cockatoos, they<br />
hop from branch to branch<br />
doing nothing<br />
but the very thing itself<br />
13
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