ISSUE FOUR: March, 2020

MAGPIE SEASON

by LENORA COLE

after hot rain
comes segmented black princesses
dirt-crumbed gasters
heavy and frantic for motherhood

comes the slow-wheeze dog-toy
demanding-food squeak
claw-scratching the exposed
vuggy surface and new, sprouting
green oval-fringes
picking damp earth
bloodlessly, child devouring
emergent child

nearby, orange bead on sweating gold flesh
goat-pupil spotted ladybird
inspects a discarded kiwi fruit peel
underside from keen view of the predatory
adolescence-fluffed beggars
afternoon grid-checking for calories with
dinosauric strut

a young waxy-leafed lilli pilli puddled
into a drain, pink-flushed
fingering the metal teeth
offers respite
to a single ant queen, scurries an escape
dragging fattened womb
and fatal, spermy prize
into the grated maw

LENORA COLE is an emerging Australian poet. Her work has been published in print in Australian Poetry Anthology, The Tundish Review, Jacaranda, and Concrescence, and online in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Umbel & Panicle, honey & lime, and Déraciné. In 2019 she received the Emerging Author Award for the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing.