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.