Finished
StoryGraph tells me you’ve recently finished reading The Price of Salt. I text you to discuss the book and the works of Patricia Highsmith but really, it’s all a thinly veiled way to start a conversation that can lead into me asking whether or not we’re still dating. You don’t text me back. You complete 10 lessons on Duolingo and get promoted to the Ruby League. I respond and click ‘Celebrate’. You don’t text me back. Facebook tells me you’re ’interested’ in the queer community picnic I’m going to next week, which is just down the road from your tiny flat and the equally tiny pizza place we used to frequent. And yet, you haven’t texted me back. You’re halfway through reading A Language of Limbs, so I text you again, because both you and this book’s poetic queer prose have been on my mind a lot lately. You don’t text me back. You’re on a 69 day streak in Spanish but the number doesn’t make me laugh like it used to and you’ve posted 5 stories about your cat on Instagram and I can see you’ve finally returned the library book you borrowed on my card three months ago and thank fuck because now my library card is no longer suspended. But you still haven’t texted me back. You’ve finished top 3 on the Duolingo leaderboard and are promoted to the Emerald League. You’ve finished reading Dylin Hardcastle. Apparently you’ve finished with me too. You never text me back.
the birding hour
for Chris
a shadowed call
your wings whispering
across semi-darkness
your glimmering eye
moonlit against
backdrop of dusk
who are you?
too loud / / too eager
with feather-flicker
and leaf crackle
you’re gone —
time-jumping
tree multiverse
versions of you
split across
the hinterland
I look up —
the moon / / the moon
who are you?
and I realise
I can see Jupiter
from here
gremlin heart
i’m normative until feral
point of triangular ear tips.
innocent until i de-robe
claw, blood dotting skin.
domesticated until you
eyeball: fang, talon, hook.
rough tongue, gremlin
heart. i think i am
viewed akin to animal.
rough voice, all gutter bark.
as per your sensibilities,
i think there’s too many
body parts in this poem.
Rae White is the author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022), and the picture book All the Colours of the Rainbow (Lothian Children’s Books 2025), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes. They won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives; and a co-host on the 4ZZZ radio show Tranzmission. You can find them at raewhite.net and @rae.elliot.white on Instagram.
Locative Magazine 