Stamps for concession cardholders: an excerpt from In The Drink by Emily Crocker
Nearly in the drink, we are trying
to wash each other’s feet without touching.
mardi gras weekend and the last before
you leave. How I can’t blame you for all
the trash in sydney. Tent pitched; the pegs slid
easy into sand and the sun melting
into the nuttelex horizon. I smile
secretly, O’Hara-style, at the sheer
inevitable picnic of our lives if we could
just sit still. For once. Pretending
to relish the coarse plants growing out of
the naked dunes. Eyes down, pull through strands
and noose my finger tips. You slip away
in the humidity
like the label from a bottle of draught,
as you list all the things I want for you
too. Things you could drop
behind the microwave
Or jam under wobbly tables.
A bottle-opener worn down to the gums.
Business cards stuffed into empty parts
of both our futures. Sometimes you have to
believe a postage stamp could tear a hole
in the side of your sharehouse. Lest you
suffocate under relentless hoping.
The type you must rip back
from your unshaved knee in
one
quick motion.
About In The Drink
In The Drink is the unflinching second poetry collection from Emily Crocker. Poems stream through In The Drink, collecting hauntings of desire and futures lost. Visceral and at times crushingly funny, In The Drink truly makes poetry of a working class queerness.
Praise for Emily Crocker
“Crocker has a vivid way with her imagery, an almost casual ability to draw attention to the unexpected. How can ‘the names of the other rocks’ move out of someone’s ‘mind like an abattoir’?” - David Dick, Cordite Poetry Review
About the author
Emily Crocker is a poet, educator, and organiser who now lives, learns, works, and writes in Naarm (Melbourne). Emily’s work in all arenas is informed by a politics of queer togetherness and class criticism, developed through lived experience and invaluable community connections. Emily grew up on Dharawal land in outer south-western Sydney, and came of age in Wollongong’s spoken word scene. Since then, she has created poetic and performance works with Shopfront Arts Coop and Campbelltown Arts Centre, and has been commissioned by Wollongong Writers Festival, Merrigong Theatre, and Red Room Poetry. Education is central to Emily’s practice and she has facilitated workshops in countless schools, youth centres, community places, and libraries. Emily completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Wollongong and is currently working towards a Master of Teaching through the University of Melbourne. In The Drink is her second collection, following Girls and Buoyant (Subbed In, 2017).
Also by Emily Crocker: Girls and Buoyant
Emily Crocker complicates home and family in her debut poetry collection, Girls and Buoyant. With sensitivity and wry observation, Crocker explores old suburbs and new losses at the intersection of late capitalism and queer love.
Second edition with a new cover. Perfect bound. 62 pages.
ISBN: 9780648147527