Backyard Occult
Ella Jeffery (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
The problem is not
how to decipher an omen,
it’s how to choose one.
Example: you see two crows
on a wire, followed by a man
who sneezes brutally
on the footpath behind you.
Then a black station wagon
tailgates you home. Rain
stencils the windows
of your bedroom. Floors above
you, someone plays
Clair de Lune on loop.
And all night you ask yourself:
which is it?
Ella Jeffery is a writer, editor and PhD candidate at QUT in Brisbane. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Westerly, foam:e, Tincture and elsewhere. Her practice-led doctoral research examines representations of uncanny and incomplete domestic spaces in contemporary Australian poetry.
