JACKSON
Breach
My birthday sucked: my back got sore.
Got sore: I sat at my desk before my walk.
Desk before my walk: yet again there was too much rain.
Too much rain: what we’ve done and La Nina.
La Nina: the Earth’s axis angles and the Earth spins.
The Earth spins: up came the sun when I’d hardly slept.
Hardly slept: too much chocolate.
Chocolate: marking papers all evening.
All evening: during the day I couldn’t finish.
Couldn’t finish: my web provider had a data breach.
Breach: ages figuring out when I just wanted to share a poem.
Poem: more important and shouldn’t have taken all morning.
Morning: best time to work.
Best time to work: nobody calls.
Nobody calls: my kids and most of my friends are asleep.
Asleep: my old timezone so far away.
So far away: too much pink on the map.
The map: what we’ve done.
What we’ve done: my birthday sucked.
Failing
I dreamed I was failing
on the loo. Blocked. Wrong.
Because it was a dream
I hooked my finger in.
A plastic bag!
Another!
A crisp packet!
Cling wrap!
When had I swallowed all that?
I couldn’t think
but there it was –
plastic plastic plastic
coming out of me.
It is
what it is
I intoned
as I pulled and pulled.
When
it stopped
I produced
a pristine poo
fit for a composting toilet
a dried-dung fire
a village pig –
or just a hole in the earth
beneath a tree …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jackson (they/them), now living in Aotearoa New Zealand, is known across Australia as a poet and performer and was the founder of Perth Poetry Club. They have published four full-length collections, most recently A coat of ashes (Recent Work Press 2019), based on their award-winning PhD. Their poems, reviews and articles are widely published.