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ALWAYS AND AGAIN

By
17 Mar 2022

Always and Again is a poem written by queer Goorie writer, Brooke Scobie.

Joy doesn’t live here

Not really

Not for us

 

Iron strokes

Of concrete colony

Split country in two

Papier-mâché skull

Melted sky saliva and silver lichen

 

Here where the world has ended 

251 times under and again

Here with you, without us

Joy is a liar

A thief

 

Our river lined and secret truth

Joy is in spirit

Living tendrils growing emerald

Curled round synapses 

Alive and dreaming

 

In our sibylline desires

Of a future where

Was is

Is was

Always and round

 

Collective sight

Fore, fifth and sixth

Grandmother melaleuca 

Twists titanium spines

Lantana and cinder block dust

 

Pyre ships billow

Blackened and rusted

Night thrones of

Glass shard sand

No longer rise to meet the sea

Beset with karkalla 

 

Bellies full of thunderous silence

Lines undrawn flow from parted lips

And joy is real

For she lives here

With us

 

Soft under foot

Once tended tender

Land back and stood back

 

Joy is was

Was is

Always and again.

By
Back to ALWAYS AND AGAIN
Brooke Scobie
Brooke Scobie looking at the camera head on in black and white. There is a field of long grass behind Brooke.

Brooke Scobie is queer Goorie single mum, poet, writer, podcaster, and community worker. Her writing is a love letter to people who’ve been systematically excluded. She’s been published in Overland Journal, Running Dog, Red Room Poetry, SBS, Best of Australian Poetry 2021, and was awarded second place in the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.

More articles from Brooke
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