blackmail press 30 Bipolarisation
Kent MacCarter
Australia

In Your Enigma - Ilinca Höpfner
Alone - Simon Williams
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Kent MacCarter is a writer and resident in Melbourne, where he lives with his wife, two cats and one child (expected birth date 4 April 2011). His poetry and a smattering of non-fiction has appeared in anthologies, journals and newspapers internationally. He is currently involved on the board of SPUNC: The Small Press Network and is also an active member in Melbourne PEN.
Present in Makarora Valley


Remorseful a roadside lamb
bleats pointier than the razor wire

strung to keep it stock, not traffic
The fabric-winged crop-duster

zips four-hundred fanfare bucks
off the grassy goat-mowed runway

a red windsock dangles expectantly near
like a cattle-dog’s exhausted tongue

co-piloting further search for drink
Teen hoons careen in mum’s sedan

Pickled exhales shift their gears
a stones-throw to a neighbour’s

place and into song. Red deer clop on damp top pasture
their character development

poises well-composed behind strategic pines
Steeling in from a vanishing point

a lone Thai man like a country highway stoat
slaloms the dotted centre-line

and through a claim he’s pedalled the vast calligraphy
in from Dunedin on a ten-speed

he motions us to photograph. Twice. 10pm an atoll
re-gifts Christmas alchemy into this valley

we madly row to reach its trumpet belts of twilight
ricocheting huge above the local ungulates

A stray wash-machine sweats out its ferrous rot
in weeds. To life it whirs and fills with infant light