the anthologia
collecting / flower gathering
Acknowledgement to country:
The first country I lived on and spent the first ten years of my life was on Dharug country — custodians of the beautiful Blue Mountains to being stewards of the waterways at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. There, I first learned much from First Nations peoples about our relationship to land, how it is a living and breathing connection, how we have a duty to be stewards in protecting and preserving nature, and what community can look like when it is not dictated by western colonial ideals of land ownership and exploitation for one's own gain. To be in tune with the world around you and listen to it, as you would a loved one.
I write this anthology of poems about family, relationships, and chosen family on Gadigal country where I have lived for most of my adult life. Songlines and storytelling are ancient traditions of the Gadigal peoples continued today. I pay my respects to these Traditional Custodians of the lands past, present, and emerging, and thank them for this beautiful country — these lands, skies, and seas they have cared for since time immemorial. I look outside my window at the beautiful twisting gum trees and acknowledge the ancient beauty and resilience of this land and its first peoples.
Storytelling about chosen family and Queerness in this country cannot go without acknowledging the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander queer folks who paved the way for the rest of us. Our country has continually failed First Nations folks and has not shed light on or given reparations for the brutality inflicted upon First Nations LGBTQIA+ peoples. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander queer and trans people are the first storytellers.
Sovereignty has never been ceded. Always was, always will be.
FLOWERS TO GATHER:
I:
Loneliness … and its enemy Community
II:
To Witness
III:
Lust
IV:
Connect
I:
Loneliness … and its enemy Community
Staring down the Otago rail trail, my thoughts attempt to pierce through the vivacious dance between the dense frosty mountain air and the warm air that rises from the sun-heated plains. They waltz together to create a tumultuous wind that threatens to throw me off my trail bike. My thoughts scream at me, pleading for answers as to why I sit endlessly pedalling to god knows where, the environment around me offering very little consolation. The flat earth rolls on seemingly forever, with burnt yellows and faint browns showing me no destination. The ancient mountains on either side of me of this dry, rough path stand magnificent and reach to the heavens
My thighs wrapped around this seat day by day have grown accustomed to stiffness and have adjusted to steadfast strain, but my mind has not yet done the same. I will tell it every time it groans that this endless path… this vastness, emptiness… is real. It dares in all its glory to be truthful— something that the Sydney town I love could not offer me
Between the snappy tapping of feet while people impatiently wait for their coffee, the faces wrapped in phone light as everyone sits in transit to work, the parties, invitations to dinners, everyone telling me of the “plan,” the “hurry,” the need to “move on,”... I found it impossible to catch up. The dishonesty required to be social bubbled up in my throat to the extent where I became nonverbal to avoid any uncomfortable verbal spillages for those around me. I decided firmly one morning as I doom scrolled not paying attention to my soggy cereal that it was time for me to quite frankly fuck off for a moment. So, the flight was paid for and, after weeks flooded by the familiar fog of work meetings, friend catch ups, and dark crowded dance floors, I suddenly found myself above the clouds flying to Queenstown, South Island, Aotearoa.
I’d been there a few times throughout my childhood by virtue of having a Tolkien-loving parent and had fallen in love with the landscape. It transforms from lush fern kingdoms where one can imagine ancient dinosaurs roaming, to dry plains full of silence, to tundra and ice capped fjords that roar into long rivers filled with life. It's a world of natural diversity quite unlike anywhere else on the planet. It's also our neighbour, and my desire to be alone was not as proud as I boasted to those around me. It felt quite comforting to be “just” across the way.
The Otago rail trail is 152 km long and decidedly, according to the fairly infrequent gym sessions I partake in when encouraged or arguably peer pressured to attend by my housemate, I would take five days to achieve this feat. Before I set off on the trail, I spent a few days in Queenstown, where I sipped on many a black coffee shamefully accompanied by a cigarette in hand as I partook in people watching.
I breathed in the endless hordes of keen bean adventurers and the families whose holidays ran in a repeated structure; every dad holding the equipment he so expensively covered and yet holding no regret in paying for it until his realisation that the person most excited to partake in such activities was always himself. Then we see the mum balancing the limbs of several screaming entities whilst strenuously attempting to regulate the spirits of these children who become all flavours of ravenously tired, hungry, bored, and deliriously thrilled at any given point — most likely within seconds of one another. Then finally the children who gaze wide eyed at the new world they didn’t believe possible before setting foot off the tarmac. The variations of this family unit differ by age, sexuality, race, and many other factors but are behaviourally carbon copies of one another.
Or you’ve got your solo explorers. Escaping the mundane normalities of their lives to complete a different mission each day — whether it's to scale the tallest peak, attach their legs to ropes and plummet into deep canyons, or weave, on skis, on each soft and sharp curve of powdered snow. They’re thrill seekers who come to this place to feel something new.
Myself on the other hand: I want to feel something old. I too am running away, as my friends loudly exclaimed to me before I left, but it's truly to soak up the ancient silence that this landscape can offer you. That's why I am now here on this abandoned train pathway that snakes its way through the mountains of the lower midlands of the South Island, rather than jumping off some cliff or out of a plane with a very attractive guide. Though that probably would’ve made more sense.
I think to myself as I pedal hard and gaze up soft …
To be in love with someone who you can’t be with is like the relationship between the sky and the ocean.
I try with all my might to force waves from deep in my belly to reach you but I never can.
In the morning after an old lover and I meet again
In the moment we hold one another in a memory
Limbs folding and vehemently clawing at each other as old friends
Intertwined in a dance that is deeply and innately familiar
Our privates thirst for each other in a way that eats and gnashes like wildfire
I hold his weight on me with all the strength I can muster
His name falling from my mouth comes easier than any new name I have muttered
Yet the next day we gaze upon each other curious
Strangers
Foreign to each other's new routines
Our new friendships
Circles
Rotations
The yearning I feel in that moment to go back to the passion and reunion of who we once were brought together through our lust of the night before strikes fast, leaves me cold and pains me
Before he wakes
I roll over to face the walls in this space untouched by my words and influence
I study the newfound art that he has nailed, stuck, and painted to his share house walls
Ones I certainly would not have picked out
The absence of my own work reminds me of the sway I once had over his aesthetics — feisty and ferocious
“That would look amazing there,” “mmmm yes gorgeous but maybe adjust this way,”
Positive, affirming, bold — oranges, ocean blues, reds
All things he used to love
I gaze upon the browns, greys, and forest greens
A different palette
Inspired by his soft gaze that since me has been inspired by his own journey of selfhood
He loves these colours for reasons I have not been privy to hear
It is in this moment that I shed a tear
For it is beautiful to learn about a human I used to know so truly
Yet it is desperately lonely
He follows me in rolling over to face the wall — held by sleep
Still tethered to the intimacy of the night before — that will vanish as he wakes — I will be asked to leave
I feel his arm roll over my soft, curvaceous hip to hold my belly
It is midday
This fleeting moment will never hold me again
Heartbreak of which all are privy to
Shapes itself in many forms
It came once to me in the form of a truck that bellowed down a highway and ran into me in all its velocity and tenacity
So much so that I recoiled and doubled over onto the floor
Finding myself in a puddle of my own sick
Or in other forms where I strain my ears away from a certain space that is playing that song they so loved
Abandoning whatever mission had taken me there
Or where I find time has been lost to me as my whole self is found sunk into an album, film, novel, or video game
Escaping reality through new narratives. Ignoring my own life and bewitched into others in a desperate attempt to lose sight that I have one myself
I thought just this morning that if I died now I would be happy with all the love I have experienced
But I say that as someone who is currently not heartbroken
When you’re in it, it feels elongated and stretched out, carved into every face around you. Time is drowsy and slow and exhausting
You never feel as if you'll be rid of it
Once you have / it goes unnoticed
The telltale sign of being over someone is that there is none
Protest as a form of care
I find protesting analogous to a relationship one can be in with a partner or best friend
Imagine you are having a horrendous night and have received grievous news
You reach out to this special companion and they insist they cannot be with you
They apologise but…
They have a party. A dinner. An event. A shift at work
Whatever it may be
That pitting feeling in your stomach and loss of feeling cared for
Of feeling loved
Is what I relate to when people choose their own lives over community liberty being fought for at protests
I cannot make equivalent the same sex marriage protests with protests for Palestine or Invasion Day marches because colonial, systemic oppression is the most horrific and most violent
However, I felt empathy at equality marches for the plight of needing people to “show up”
When friends had told me they were busy or had things on that they would rather do or even if later that night they had a party they wanted to go to rather than spend their time in solidarity
It hurt
It felt as if our story and our hearts and our community was a trivial matter that one could thrust under a rug and forget about
How can those who are experiencing the oppression forget?
How can they go out and drink and party when their lovers pass away?
When their children are harmed
It is a privilege to choose oneself
To not empathise
To not give space to at least attempt to
It is a white thing to do
In the supposed realm of healthy “self care,” most white people around me — I’m sure I have not been exempt from such myself
Choose their own pleasure and self service over sacrifice
Of course! Why wouldn’t they? The world suits us!
Being asked to shift our attention from our own pleasures is seemingly impossible for us white folks
Because we so rarely are forced into doing so
We put our elders in aged-care homes
Out of sight. Out of mind
We put our children in childcare rather than see if there are fellow family, chosen family, and loved ones that can share the nurturing load
Out of sight. Out of mind
We go to spas. To therapy. To the gym. Over meaningful discourse with our communities
Out of sight. Out of mind
You think I am ridiculous for spouting this
You think “but Anwyn you’re asking too much of others”
Yes
Yes
This is why you are lonely
Because how can you expect others to show up for you when you do not show up for them
But you do expect your grandparents' inheritance
You expect your children to obey you despite them not knowing who you are for a large extent of their life
I understand we exist in a capitalist and colonial system. This makes this hard to change
But be aware then and show up
Disrupt the system
This disruption
It comes from the people
It comes from our movements
Our feet hitting pavements
Our voices echoing through cityscapes
“While you're shopping. Bombs are dropping”
A cry at Palestine marches every week
Rings true to this sentiment
Remember you exist in conjunction with the world
You are not an isolated leaf but you belong to an ecosystem of branches, trunks, root systems, and spirals of age.
If you are an isolated leaf it is because you have fallen off from where you once belonged and you are dried up and stale and dead
We exist together in community
We must show up
The room of a closeted teenager,
One of giggles and grief
You lie amidst the posters of artists like Patti Smith, Amyl and the Sniffers, Banks, Lana del Rey, and Kehlani and you silently yearn
“I just love their music” — you and your friends explain
But no one is convinced you’re there for the sound
Particularly not your own fingers
That explore inside you and find that such passion for the arts is more wet than anything else
Some of your friends / who, to your disbelief / are quite truly and authentically straight and their conversations about the boys from that school you danced with splatter the school playground
You nod and smile and probably mention the most androgynous looking boy you met and say “yeah he was nice”
But your heart’s not in it
It’s 2015
You get changed in the PE locker room
And nearly pass out from the amount of Victoria Secret perfume drenched and laid thick in the space
Girls laughing all around you undressed
You are not included
Or rather you feel that way
Your eyes stay glued to the floor
You can’t dare let them wander
You feel dirty
Wrong
When at times you lift your gaze for a split second you’re met with sharp pain in your side
Not only because it feels a bit creepy
But more than that / it feels like a volcano of secrets at the brink of eruption
You rip yourself away
Denial
But then comes along the fruitful time of 9pm
You have escaped the structural institution of masking
You lie amidst the posters softly gazing down on you in their strength and sexy power
And you open up Facebook
“Rainbow Kids”
Started by who knows who
Akin to Newtown affirmations existing now
It’s a mysterious vigilante whom you really wish you could discover
Just to thank them
This is a group Facebook page
Where we shed our masks and become free
Meetups
Picnics
Gatherings
Dates
The queer young folks can exist free within the safety of this online forum
I scroll curiously
One step forward / held by this space and feeling at home
But two steps back / feeling like an imposter
As the years pass
I see more and more familiar faces joining this space
“Coming out”
My heart swoons
Back in the school playground you start to whisper “RK” to these faces
And they smirk and smile back and utter the word “yes”
An ode to the Rainbow Kids forum
I am thankful
Your legacy echoes through the walls and despite my inability to speak of you, I hear you
Countless stories leak their way into the last year and a half and I giggle as it helps me understand you
I had no idea you would feel this way
Home in the physical sense has been a concept to me that is fleeting
Instilled rather in people than spaces
I’ve lived in over thirty houses
And that’s not counting the times I was technically without a physical space so I became a visitor temporarily to others
From dilapidated, mould-ridden cemetery homes
To the on-stilt, wooden buildings that allowed the draft of the Katoomba ice cold winters to sweep into the home making me aware of my bones / sensitive in my cognition
I came to you a visitor and I thought akin to all other homes that this too would be fleeting
I had always been okay with this
It was ritual
But suddenly as I was swept off my feet / I became fearful of losing you
Not only did I fall in love with the people inside you but your structure I too became fond of
I explored many rooms
Peered intimately into the lives of friends I came to care deeply for
As I was given the privilege of being in their spaces
I liked your quirks
The adventures to the bathroom situated outside
I liked more what you do for community
The way many folks faces light up as they are welcomed into you
The memories that so many have made within your walls
The music you make
The way you’ve taken that outside and built a congregation
The art you inspire
How I have come to colour your walls
The way you in a socio-economic crisis allow for respite
You craft for your habitants to have opportunities we had always desired / but never had the time for
The way you’ve brought to me human beings that I will love for the rest of my life
For that I am most thankful
You have seen pleasure
Inspired desire
You have seen loss
Betrayal
Pain
And
Joy
Celebration
Community
I want to clean you
I’ve wanted to take care of you
At times when it is gut instinct for me to sprint elsewhere
You beckoned me to stay
To sit with discomfort and become vulnerable
Maze Manor I am thankful for you
You have taught me what the experience of “home” truly means / what it demands / inspires
I cannot wait to share your stories with every place that will come after you
For they have a lot to live up to
II:
To Witness
When he mixes he teleports me to magnificent spaces
I sit and am swept up immediately into soundscapes that are delightful and rich with colours
They electrify my senses and encourage my body to move without question
My mind stimulated and offered euphoria amidst any type of storm being weathered
The way he too indulges in his own sound making evokes such deep joy from me
The hips swaying / the focus enamoured with his own artistry / the smirk appearing as a sign of self satisfaction
I am filled with love for him
Is it true that one can become closer to someone / not through any type of relational experience / but by witnessing
I witness his talent and masterful skilfulness and I feel goosebumps erect over me
He reaches deep inside all those who bare witness
Without knowing / the man who loves to give to others / does this most when he is not present with them
But rather does so when he is present with the sounds that he is in discourse with
I loved seeing you touch your chest
Your rest your hand with care over the top of recently made scars
In protection I am sure
But to me it is ceremonial
And sacred
It is a privilege to know you and to love you
You touch so much despite lack of touch given to you in your life
You have always loved with determination
With acts of service and sacrifice
So to see you in the quiet moments giving to yourself is softly mesmerising
My friend and brother and lover I wish you well always and am still proud long after I am gone
III:
Lust
I am perceived as too horny for my own good…
I crave the salt and stenching musky smells of cunt and cock regularly
Of the pricks and harsh rubbing against my chin that pubic hair offers
I cannot relate to the voices that speak in angst about their own smells and in disdain of their body hair
Laced with shame, disgust, and fear of their selfhood
This given to them not by their own sentience and choice but by society
I desire all the smells and deepest of sensations that our private inner worlds offer
Because it feels defiant
It reminds me that the act is real and alive and moving
That though at times this act is hidden from the world’s narrative
Within our soft sheets it is didactic and demands to be heard
Though so much has been stolen from our community
They will never take this from us
my sex drive is one of the earth
I want you like the dark green moss travels across the mass of heavy cool stones
I want to melt into you and grow all over your limbs
Make them home for my ecosystem
I thirst for you like the harsh desert screams for rain
I want you running down my throat and I will savour every drop
I desire you in such a way that I want you to flood my psyche
Flashes and glimpses of your body bursting into my mind at random points of my day
I want to give in to you like the waterfall spills from the upper banks into the chasm below
The cries are deafening and the might - sheer and breathtaking
I crave you like the brink of an eruption; the volcano that is my orgasm is brought on by your heaving, smokey gaze
You kiss me and it rumbles down my neck and melts past my chest all the way down to my cunt and I rock into you
I want your shoulders hanging over me like a canopy
Wrap me in your protection. I submit to the world you offer
I crave all the ways you can pleasure me like the diversity of the tropical rainforest. Your tongue colours me in a rainbow of undiscovered beauty
I moan and I want you to join me in chorus like the many species of bird life found within these dark fruitful places
I long for the exploration of your innermost cave and I dutifully will stay present in its wake
I want to be trapped by its darkness and suffocated in its humidity
I want your lips on mine like sunlight
Sometimes providing light in glimpses where you kiss me softly and other times I want you searing deep into me like a blaring open grassland underneath the sun's watch
Enter me and push
I desire to sway with you like the breeze
Our hips can follow one another and dance
They flirt and tease in every direction we so choose. Free and singing
I moan for you like the house creaks in the storm. Its timber panels whim to the gushing and pounding
Please touch me. Do not hold back in your desire. I consent to your power
I come at your fingers like the waves lap on the shoreline. Again and again in a soft repeated pattern
You allow me to come up onto you in soft stride and with humble strength — you taste salt
You come for me like a mountain moves to the sky. Mighty and without shame
I gaze up in wonder at your beauty. What a sight to behold is your pleasure
After
I lie in peaceful gaze as the ethereal moon watches down on its slumbering lovers
Light is cast upon your face and I smile in pure adoration
IV:
Connect
My first kiss.
The afternoon wind change came hard and cold and stabbed its way through the dark valley, reaching the back of our necks sending something of a warning. We ran down the long winded road, our thighs burning and our hearts pumping. As young kids growing up in the Blue Mountains, we all knew the Indigenous Dharug peoples’ stories of the area. Whispers and tales of the infamous Bunyip were the ones that haunted and plagued all of our minds. The Bunyips were the creatures that pulled themselves out of the creeks and draped their claws through the surrounding bushland, gobbling up any children in their wake. These tales were often told to us to make sure that when we did adventure, we didn’t stray too far from the main drag.
Oliver and I pushed down the street racing each other, laughing and smiling with free youthfulness, the tales of the Bunyips stretched far from our thoughts. This was until we heard a deep and echoing howl that bounced off the gumtrees and pulled us to a stop in our tracks. We stood shivering in our gumboots, holding hands, our palms beginning to sweat. I looked to Oliver, my fellow scruffy-haired four-year-old companion who lived two doors up from me and I whispered to him that I was scared. He whispered back that he was too. It was as if a flood of nightmares came upon us, where every single image that flickered over my vision was the Bunyips crawling up from the falls below our street with gnashing teeth and a burning desire for our flesh.
It was at this moment that Oliver and I decided to have our first kiss. Maybe not the most romantic time most would think, but a moment of pure childhood, where fear, change, play, and being experimental arose for both of us. After such, the fears of the Bunyip had vanished and sounds of “ewwwww” and “urghhhh”and “yucky” filled the air. We then trotted gleefully as if nothing had happened, to my house where Mum made us two ice cream cones with vanilla filled down to the bottom of the tip. Such a memory ends with ice cream smudged all over our faces and smiles as wide as the Three Sisters.
I am enjoying you
My friend
I love to watch you dance and twist throughout crowds
Your energy infectious to all those who cast eyes upon you
I love hearing your laughter as it blossoms in conversation
How welcome you make us feel
How you transform energy in a room
Alight now with your beauty
I love hearing your bits
How comedy skits come natural to you at 8am in the morning
I love your analogies and colourful storytelling
I am enamoured on whatever journey you take me down
I learn from your wisdom
The way you intently listen to others sorrows
And joys
The way you show your love
Whether it’s acts of service in always inviting and providing to others in your home
Or how we make dinners together and you make sure my mind stays sharp through the belly being fed
Or words of affirmation where you inspire bold resilience
Continual praise and encouragement throughout any storm
Or conversation that bounces for hours and hours and we soak up every syllable and chew on every verb
Or physical touch
An elongated and excited cuddle where we embrace after you had been gone to the Irish wilderness for so long
I want to press together in glee and kiss you all over your face
Or a hand drifting and monetarily touching as you pass my hips in a corridor
You whispering softly in such a graze that “hey, I am here and I love you”
Or gift giving
When you work the hardest of anyone I know and sacrifice much and you have not just money but the dutiful and compassionate attention in finding trinkets that suit your loved ones
Your face lights up as you see them in pleasure from your gifts
Your generosity giving soothing happiness to us
I am enjoying you — all of you
I use these words to describe my array of wonderful friends
How lucky am I to love you all
To be loved by you
Your spirits dance and live within the pages of this dialogue
I wish to adventure with you all for as long as I live
I am continuously proud of the choices you make and the way you conduct yourself in this world
I will continue to boast to others of your beauty
Will continue to be silly with you
Soak in your company
And hold you always
The journey of self actualising is lifelong and without restraint
Something I love about these pages is that though these thoughts are true to me now
And I value that they are enshrined to these pages / unable to change
Always held
I value that despite their truthful steadfast nature
They simultaneously may not be able to exist as truths accessible to me in future
I may not feel them or encompass them in my body
They may feel past and made strange by the weathering of new feelings and new thoughts
This to me is exciting
To grow, be fluid and playful within our dance of existence is something I look forward to
Different layers peeled back with each new dawn sprung upon us
Further revealing new and complex colours behind our eyes
To be human, experiment with thought and pose further questions about who we are is delightful
To revel in our own shapings of memory and dialogue and relationship is poignantly insatiable
I will remain giddy to learn more
To further connect with the world around me and all its inhabitants
To become closer to myself
