but I’m thirty-nine I say voice rising at the end like a question I can’t see the doctor who is behind me he just snaps his gloves instead of answering then the kind-eyed nurse besides the bed put her hand on my arm for a moment I think she’s signalling me to stay quiet but the valium kicks in and I take a breath look at the ceiling not at the shining steel equipment and try to think of relaxing places like a babbling brook and oh crap now I need to do a nervous wee I wonder if they’ll let me but the doctor’s cold gloves hands are suddenly between my legs and I do a quick kegel to keep my geriatric bladder obedient and the kind-eyed nurse must think my scrunched face is fear as she’s back next to me telling me to relax so I just smile and count my breaths in-two-three-out-two-three-four while the doctor puts the shining steel inside me even colder than his hands and I watch on the screen as teeny-weeny eggs are retrieved and the doctor and nurse count out loud and check each one under a microscope and label the little dishes while I lie there and try not to jump when it hurts like a hot poker I am already bruised on the outside from the weeks of needles and I can’t think of the babbling brook because I’m wondering the whole time if my teeny-weeny geriatric eggs will have a chance at a life beyond their dishes

Winner of the Mulga Bill Poetry Award, 2026

A contrapuntal poem, published in the Live and Let DEI Anthology, edited by Jendi Reiter, in response to the US Government’s list of banned words. Read here

Contrapuntal poem printed in Barbara, a Scottish broadside. Read here

I’m waiting to feel happy, you tell me,

swinging your chair violently in our small

shared cubicle—corporate prison! according to you—

taking up all the space. I press forward into my desk,

hard plastic meeting flesh softened by office life

and keep typing my report. I can’t breathe here,

you say, and I know you’ll be looking out the

window again, staring at life in the streets below.

Or up into the sky, watching for the planes that

are heading to the places

you talk about, dream about, have posters

of them tacked in a halo around your computer.

Once you’re living elsewhere, you tell me, I’ll forget

you were ever really here at all

You aren’t really here now, not when

your days are spent wishing for otherness,

not when every hour you say that true untethering

from corporate prison would be cutting your

headphone cord with a knife then hitting

send on the email waiting in your Drafts folder.

You let me read it once, but made me sit on my

hands in case I pressed send even though I promised

I wouldn’t. It was the grenade-throw resignation that

others joked about writing but never ever would,

even though the Kahlil Gibran quote about money

was nice. You’ve been saving up for years to get out,

but between orphans, rhinos, and water pumps,

you can’t decide where you should go first

Choosing where to go first keeps you tethered.

Keeps you caught in the cords and calls and computers,

up here behind glass, above the life but below the planes.

I’ve sent you deals for flights, articles I’ve read on villages

that need hands, children who need help.

I stopped sending you things once your posters

broke their halo and spread to my walls,

how could I explain to you again I wasn’t

dreaming your dream.

I was waiting to become a mother but

every time I mentioned IVF you’d say

hashtag tradwife and welcome to Gilead,

so I stopped telling you stuff

about my life, and just waited

I’ve been waiting for you to cut that cord

and break out of our too-small cubicle, so

we can both begin to breathe.

This morning you weren’t here, and

all day I’ve wondered if your email was

being read by our bosses—capitalist overlords! you said—

and if you were sitting on every plane I saw,

managing to share a space in calm silence.

But they just told me you were found

last night, on the train, at the end of the line

sleeping but not sleeping. Someone from HR

has been to take your posters down, I have

so much room to swing my own chair now.

I’m waiting to feel happy.

Winner of the Not Quite Write Prize, April 2026

Without fail each month

The gathering within the cave

The wet echo of excited whispers

Darkness and dankness

Woollen blankets, candles

Soft slurp of corks being pulled

Candle flames appear like glow worms

Tonight the ritual has run too long

The wine has run too freely

Pale flesh upon wool slumbering

In the stillness before dawn

I take the boat, find the air

Clear, still, silent, deep

Moonglow on my skin

But you call my name

A glow worm bobs at the cave mouth

I row back to you

Published on the Ekphrastic Review July 2023

You wore black to my wedding

Midnight silk shot with turquoise and amethyst

A dark flower haunting the

Spring bouquet of pastel-robed ladies

They took me from my father’s home

Customary to cry out, protest, shriek

No play acting required on my part,

The transaction not of my choosing

Upon entering his home

I was to call out the traditional

Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia

But I glanced back, and saw you

Stooped, to pick up a fallen flower

Cheeks, and eyes reddened

Creamy shoulder exposed

Sorrow writ large across your face

Upon entering his home

I called out, while looking back,

Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaia

Where you are, there am I.

Published on the Ekphrastic Review September 2023

My spoon is clenched in my fist, cornflakes milk-sogged and forgotten

I can’t eat while I count the gun shots. That’s nine, no, ten.

Ten sheep, I tell my mother. She’s leaning over the kitchen sink

staring out at the long yellow stretch of paddocks,

the empty blue of the sky.

Heavy boots are kicked off onto the verandah. A dog yelps, a door slams.

Can I come out with you today? I ask my father, as he wipes his hands

You’re going to school and no arguments, my mother says.

At bedtime I lie awake and listen—no crickets, no frogs, no night birds,

 the dark is so silent my ears hurt.

What’s daddy doing? I ask my mother the next morning

He’s out in the yards, his arms spread along the timber fence

Your father’s praying in his own way, my mother says from the sink

She’s not washing up, just staring out at the yellow and blue

I’m not going to school today, I tell her, pulling on my boots.

The top fence rail is too high, but the middle rail is just right

I spread my own arms out, a splinter silently needles my palm.

My father puts his hand on mine; it’s rough and warm as leather

Then we stand and pray in our own way—

that morning there are no gun shots to count.

Three bedtimes after, there’s a noise in the dark, a plink-plink-plink

The plinks turn to sploshes, then a drumming on the roof

Thankgodthankgodthankgod, my father hollers—

He is dancing my mother around the yard,

her nightie heavy and wet.

(Winner of the Bookness Poetry Prize 2024)

Blackout poetry in the Verseve ‘Alice in Wonderland’ edition, 2025. Get the free ebook here

the sky was blue only yesterday

the grass blindingly green

now there’s a space

where you were

heart hurt has bleached the colours

from the sky, the grass, my joy

even the clouds pull away

the lilac skies

stroked in sorrow

Featured on Reverie Journal’s Instagram August 2023