Sophia Wilson's poetry and short fiction have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including recently in Mayhem, Landfall, Blackmail Press, Flash Frontier, Not Very Quiet, Takahē, Intima, Australian Poetry Anthology, Poetry New Zealand and New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology. She was runner-up in the 2020 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems and winner of the 2020-21 Dunedin City of Literature Robert Burns Poetry Competition. She is based in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Sophia Wilson

---

 

Wash

They force fed the whale-shaped mountain
with aluminium nitrate and fuel oil,
stuffed its belly, primed its flanks.

Their slick-shot meal exploded its innards,
shattered cartilage, splintered the curve of its rib bones,
shred its forest-clad skin.

Rubble stemmed the flow of a babbling stream sourced from
deep under ancient blubber. The heart rock split and shuddered
and dust spewed from its blowhole in ghostly shroud.

The land butchers are gone, shadows long,
gone to whatever it is they do when the blowing up's done

but tonight the mountain will stretch moonward in grief song,
imploring the sky to unpin itself,
descend
and wash over it
like ocean.