Emerging Author Award — lenora cole
Also highly commended in the Poetry Category
lenora cole is an emerging poet from Queensland, Australia. Her work has been published in print in Australian Poetry Anthology, The Tundish Review, Jacaranda, and Concrescence, and online in Umbel & Panicle, honey & lime, Déraciné, and several hundred fools.
Judge’s Comment:
In the Company of Butchers weaves between places and perspectives—from Moreton Bay to Darlinghurst—compelling readers to consider colonial crimes against land and people through blunt, unrestrained metaphors (money stashed “like a butcherbird / storing carnage in a tree”) and visceral diction (“loops of intestine dumped down”).
Judge’s Comment:
In the Company of Butchers weaves between places and perspectives—from Moreton Bay to Darlinghurst—compelling readers to consider colonial crimes against land and people through blunt, unrestrained metaphors (money stashed “like a butcherbird / storing carnage in a tree”) and visceral diction (“loops of intestine dumped down”).
In the Company of Butchers
Moreton Bay, 1848
New town arrival, pockets – allegedly – lined with promises of paper
rumours flow fast as ginger beer and vinegar-sour wine
the providence of gossip uncertain as the cause of death
autopsy reports too many wounds to determine.
A sawyer, the green-est, cleanest-behind-the-ear type money
easily inflated, easily stashed like a butcherbird
storing carnage in a tree juncture for later consumption
How many cedars in thirteen thousand feet
chopped into manageable logs, gutted and sold?
It’s a kind of butcher-work, you learn the heft of an axe
separating the halves of a body, splitting rough skin, a stuck knife
dribbling sap, sticky jobs for hard men splintered by hard labour
Would you have been safer on the other side
of winding, name-erased Maiwar, holding
the keys to a different life in your bags?
Twenty-five years from hunting grounds to murder scene
your offal now mixing with the pigs and sheep and cattle
river turned sewer, the unboiled remnants of a young, white city
claiming territory with tallow-softened hands.
March 26th, Sunday, 7:30am
Here are the dusty facts, botched investigation begins
at Mr. Rankin’s garden. Part one of the mutilated corpse
discarded in the lapping shallows like abattoir run-off.
Part two found opened on the right side, cut top to bottom, slippery
with drained blood. Part three the dog finds first
thoughtless head propped between steel joists
your death becomes part of the construction
of a mythology, a closet skeleton of misbegotten
greed and ambition made violent, made mad
But that’s not part of your story just yet
we’re still in the middle, in the accusations
tracking the scent of blood, the crushed grass drag-trail,
the loops of intestine dumped down the backyard well.
Seven men at the Bush Inn Hotel the night
you were still alive, six arrested and questioned,
one charged – you knew him, were friends, implied more
by those sticking motive into crime.
You are present for the inquest, determined
sufficient evidence, and he is transported for trial.
Darlinghurst, July 18th, Tuesday, 9:15am
His procession moves to the stage slowly, dredging guilt
from the blameless, jury-condemned soul ascends
the gallows, his protestations refused and given
the last penalty of the law – drawn bolt and a drop launches
this wretched victim of depraved, punitive habit from shackles to eternity.
Four thousand sickened, watching the criminal foundations of a colony
with his snapping ribs and wheezing death-gurgle
hoping that blood is repaid with blood and the event is ended.
But his circumstantial innocence permeates the new growth
integral to a rough town of rough men, sudden money
as unexplainable as the hours, the unaccounted details
of your unfortunate company and thus, deconstruction. Whispers become talk
become deathbed confessions become legend
And still, you refuse to be forgotten, you and the butcher
slow-rooted through one another’s histories, entangled
mysteries of undocumented sales, receipts never sighted
blood and bone make rich the earth, expansive purchase shapes
and dictates the lay of the land, settling barbarism within the margins while
your disappeared potential stains a dirt-rivered city.
New town arrival, pockets – allegedly – lined with promises of paper
rumours flow fast as ginger beer and vinegar-sour wine
the providence of gossip uncertain as the cause of death
autopsy reports too many wounds to determine.
A sawyer, the green-est, cleanest-behind-the-ear type money
easily inflated, easily stashed like a butcherbird
storing carnage in a tree juncture for later consumption
How many cedars in thirteen thousand feet
chopped into manageable logs, gutted and sold?
It’s a kind of butcher-work, you learn the heft of an axe
separating the halves of a body, splitting rough skin, a stuck knife
dribbling sap, sticky jobs for hard men splintered by hard labour
Would you have been safer on the other side
of winding, name-erased Maiwar, holding
the keys to a different life in your bags?
Twenty-five years from hunting grounds to murder scene
your offal now mixing with the pigs and sheep and cattle
river turned sewer, the unboiled remnants of a young, white city
claiming territory with tallow-softened hands.
March 26th, Sunday, 7:30am
Here are the dusty facts, botched investigation begins
at Mr. Rankin’s garden. Part one of the mutilated corpse
discarded in the lapping shallows like abattoir run-off.
Part two found opened on the right side, cut top to bottom, slippery
with drained blood. Part three the dog finds first
thoughtless head propped between steel joists
your death becomes part of the construction
of a mythology, a closet skeleton of misbegotten
greed and ambition made violent, made mad
But that’s not part of your story just yet
we’re still in the middle, in the accusations
tracking the scent of blood, the crushed grass drag-trail,
the loops of intestine dumped down the backyard well.
Seven men at the Bush Inn Hotel the night
you were still alive, six arrested and questioned,
one charged – you knew him, were friends, implied more
by those sticking motive into crime.
You are present for the inquest, determined
sufficient evidence, and he is transported for trial.
Darlinghurst, July 18th, Tuesday, 9:15am
His procession moves to the stage slowly, dredging guilt
from the blameless, jury-condemned soul ascends
the gallows, his protestations refused and given
the last penalty of the law – drawn bolt and a drop launches
this wretched victim of depraved, punitive habit from shackles to eternity.
Four thousand sickened, watching the criminal foundations of a colony
with his snapping ribs and wheezing death-gurgle
hoping that blood is repaid with blood and the event is ended.
But his circumstantial innocence permeates the new growth
integral to a rough town of rough men, sudden money
as unexplainable as the hours, the unaccounted details
of your unfortunate company and thus, deconstruction. Whispers become talk
become deathbed confessions become legend
And still, you refuse to be forgotten, you and the butcher
slow-rooted through one another’s histories, entangled
mysteries of undocumented sales, receipts never sighted
blood and bone make rich the earth, expansive purchase shapes
and dictates the lay of the land, settling barbarism within the margins while
your disappeared potential stains a dirt-rivered city.
