…

I'm born into a double-cuff shirt,

cradling stickyweed burrs behind my ears and

on the nape of my neck as if they are medals,

I wash them off; they are baptismal, sacrificial. I am home.  



A boy called me a small stream and

I told him I am the whole damn ocean,



yanking my lapels like I am abseiling from them,

dragging my body into the world, dragging the world into my body, 

and I look sharp! Polka dots, checks, one with a scar

running down the side of the blazer and trousers as if

I am a frog born mid-leap off the dissection table.

I'm born from my voice when it wavers,

in that moment when it stops wavering.

I'm born, grinning, from my newly unpicked pockets,

born, gripping my own shoulders and shaking them,

born life-raft, born lichen. I’m more than brackish - I am brine,



striding. My arteries are spewing time. My life 

started when I learnt which way up to put cufflinks



and with an ocean that had ideas of itself,

with a whole damn ocean in a roadside ditch. 

...

Listen to my Out-Spoken Performance!