Featured in

- Published 20240206
- ISBN: 978-1-922212-92-4
- Extent: 204pp
- Paperback, ePub, PDF, Kindle compatible

The first roll I developed,
with its saturated drought-skin
landscapes, spliced
my hometown into a sepia
I could almost swallow.
Five sheep and a fence line –
overexposed spinifex –
Dad’s face in a motorbike mirror –
before. I had been starving,
and the ritual stuck.
Roll by roll. Grain by grain.
Sometimes, when I’m tired
of my own eyes,
I slip the lens cap into my pocket,
its hard little circle
pressing into my hip
as I walk this big soft circle earth
incompletely.
I need to shear my experience of everything
but its texture. Cauterise the moment.
The cattle grate –
the kangaroos –
the manic flick of crickets
in the waterless tank.
History is a heavy handful
and a sore neck, but it
is safer than memory.
You don’t see their little fried bodies.
Only the jump.
Share article
About the author

Alisha Brown
Alisha Brown is a poet and traveller born on Kamilaroi land. She won the 2022 Joyce Parkes Women’s Writing Prize and placed second in...
More from this edition

Nostalgia on demand
Non-fictionHow then do we approach a circumstance in which it is possible to consciously curate those memories and sense impressions, such that they become mere features of our ‘profile’? Or one where third parties, having gleaned enough data to know us better than we know ourselves, can supply those memories and impressions for us?

Which way, Western artist?
Non-fiction Michael Zavros, Bad Dad 2013, oil on canvas, 110 x 150 cm INSIDE YOU THERE are two wolves. Their names are Mark Fisher and Camille...

The green gold grassy hills
FictionI’d missed her fiftieth birthday party the year before due to the usual restrictions of time and money. But as I stood at the window scrubbing vegetables, I wondered what had been so important that I hadn’t been able to make an exception for someone to whom a year could be a lifetime. Under-eights soccer game? Kids’ sleepover? But my partner could have done that on their own, couldn’t they?