So odd for a stranger out here to be quite so forlorn,
amongst all the tourist facades and the Instagram smiles.
So odd for a poem out here to be given this form.

The blow-ins want earthiness—ancient things lost and reborn.
I came for a job, but my boss isn’t sold on my style.
So odd for a stranger out here to be quite so forlorn.

The locals seem bonded together, but I’m too withdrawn.
Seclusion’s an art, or a curse. Or a kind of denial.
So odd for a poem out here to be given this form.

My people back home want impressions—too painfully drawn
from urgent commitments and too little sleep by a mile.
So odd for a stranger out here to be quite so forlorn.

The council can’t keep all the drunks off municipal lawns.
But local kids caught after midnight are sent off to trial.
So odd for a poem out here to be given this form.

My cherished misfortunes are nothing to the Arrernte, torn
by white occupation. Their nation, my nation defiles.
So odd for a stranger out here to be quite so forlorn.
So odd for a poem out here to be given this form.

(An earlier version of this poem was published in the anthology Home and Content by Bowen Street Press, October 2023).

**

Glen Hunting is a poet based in Mparntwe, Arrernte country (Alice Springs, NT). Among other things, he writes about notions of home, estrangement, and cultural value, and the hopes and frustrations surrounding reciprocity, allyship, and empowerment. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Verandah, Plumwood Mountain, Blue Bottle Journal, Portside Review, London Grip New Poetry, and elsewhere. He received a 2024 Varuna/Arts NT residential fellowship and was joint winner of the 2024 Liquid Amber Emerging Poet Prize.

Another work by Glen Hunting
‘Waterhole’
appears in the print version of P76 Issue 9
available for $20 (plus postage and handling)
from Rochford Cottage Bookshop

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents

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