“Crumpled white shapes bobbed at waist height just past the verandah — the glowing heads of wild iris, their spiked bodies dark and rustling underneath. Standing among them was Sal, her hands held out so that the flowers head-butted and kissed her knuckles and wrists, and Jo couldn’t have said why but from then on she trusted Sal, and started looking at her straight on instead of sideways…”

“I opt-out of the binary & the boldness shivers dusk, how cold berates a child. / how a lightning stammers in the hands of a cop, / learning to quench his flame on an effeminate child…”

“they will take their offerings to Ma Cho Po and pray for our journey / for the abundance that awaits us / beyond the plantations and indenture / the coolies’ debt / No Dogs or Chinese…”

“That evening, sitting in the car, / your cheeks wet with saltwater tides pushing / from your moonlit eyes, / you carry the vulnerability of crustaceans…”

“And / it's barely perceptible when / you do move: a small pebble / cast from the boat, and then / another and another; the / tentative ripples stay close…”

“I am crowd surfing / A congregation of queers all with their hands up to support me…”

“This way, this way / you find nothing else said / but drink a late brew tea / on the fibro shack porch…”

“Salt surrounds / Our bodies / We drink / The brine…”

“I snuck a jar of your lemon pickles to Germany in my luggage. I savoured every last piece, every last drop. Boju, I think I have magic too; I stuffed our whole home into a jar…”

“wildflowers, sunburnt, smouldering, little / petals of wanting, murmurs / tickle my ear…”

“The sea disappears into itself. / We hold onto nothing, not even / the day’s warm breeze, white gulls returning / to the flat tide, the sun that fades slowly…”

“today you are blobfish ~ paranoid anchovy ~ rusting wreck ~ but even bleached and brittle skeletons of coral ~ have been known to regrow afresh ~ after a nuclear blast…”

“Whilst you glide away / from the ruins with your fledgling brood towards / new horizons, the last laugh’s on them. They— / with their strange little kinks, slurping on your saliva, / calling it the caviar of the east…”

“now / in this scrap yard / a part of my chassis / is a safe place / for pink anemone / to climb…”

“he asked why I raced that fast while I was still putting back my heart into my / chest panting & scared I took a fishy look at him & replied I thought it was gunshots…”

“She pulled my tenderness from me, pulled / its soft body against the beds of oysters / and lit the remains fluorescent, the better / to clearly see. She named this act science…”