Poetry
Luoyang Chen
Feature Poet
Poets
Indrani Perera
Emilie Collyer
Kellie Yukiko
Luoyang Chen
Dimitris Miheloudakis
Ling Toong
Doing Now
Wavering a rhythmic pattern of mud, the death of an empty eucalyptus shell, metallic, clank.
A bulk of wolf fur that channels volcanic grass, wide open eyes, a nest of ants (You
smell like ants.), and so on. It’s dead, but fresh (Can you touch it?).
Black swans, black swans of the wetlands// he who mourns cannot/he who
mourns should not// a body that dislocates, the lands not his, not my own. I
cannot, I should not mourn.
The mud finds 106 ways to unfold its being — crush it, break it to
smell. The texture of identity is fractured, fragmented, and weak. Only
the words are doing now.
Luoyang Chen is the author of Flow (Red River, 2023) which can be purchased from Centre for Stories and on Amazon. They currently reside on Wongatha Country.