the turkeys

she stops at the faded water tank and thinks of the way they used to celebrate the disintegration of the sky: the rare cracking of blueness that seeped rain into the swollen dead lungs of the dam

the turkeys was published in Island Online.

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by the shearing shed with its tin roof

and creaking greasy walls, she thinks of the colours of the land, the colours of her memories, the brown mice brown snakes brown water browned skin the red sky red kangaroos red road her burnt cheeks; and the cream because of the wheat: so much endless crop unravelling into the horizon like fingers, tilting under heavy wind, and because of all those dirty sheep. she thinks how she thought of the land as hers, the sweeping plains and arid skies, how she grew up and left and learnt of oldness and history and spirit, how the gum trees whisper through cracked lips of a truth she understands now as only how little she understands / she stops at the faded water tank and thinks of the way they used to celebrate the disintegration of the sky: the rare cracking of blueness that seeped rain into the swollen dead lungs of the dam where she watched her father dip sheep to kill the lice, and that she swam in with her brothers to avoid baths in the big plastic tub with water heated from the kettle everyone shared because sometimes the rain did not come / she stops near the old turkey pen and thinks of races to tap the tank to check the water level and how the dam bed was often empty because flimsy sky bile soaked straight through the soil if it had been a dry summer and how its dry dust would scratch in her dry panicked throat when her brothers chucked her into the pen with no choice but to run from those sharp turkey claws she knew would rip her apart if she was caught; she thinks of the nurse poised with the latch telling off the boys and waiting for her tiny daughter to circle back around before opening the gate to let her shoot through, dirt-covered tear-streaked, before slamming it shut on those angry gobbling turkeys / by the dam with hair down her spine and eyelashes long enough to keep the flies out she strips to her underwear and