we / into the woods

Sarah Pearce

Sarah Pearce is a poet, editor, and researcher living and working on unceded Kaurna Country (South Australia). Her work appears in Aeternum, Outskirts, Meniscus, Writing from Below, TEXT, The Suburban Review, Overland, Cordite, Rabbit, and various anthologies, including Best of Australian Poems 2023. She has held residencies at Adelaide City Library, FELTspace gallery, Gunyah (NSW), and Island View Writers’ House (SA), performed at Blenheim and Adelaide Fringe Festivals, and was the recipient of a 2024 Literary Fellowship at the State Library of South Australia. She writes about embodiment, queer experience, mental and physical health, and the environment.

reach to kiss and we miss     i see
you sweating from the doorway     i
try to tongue the gap     a crumb of
space scattered across willing lips

lizard in the corner     languid lick of
scales     we’re on loop     unsteady
ready to leap but not to fall     would
you like to see me fail     love

smoke spectre stings     gap between
words and palm     one lone crumb
slipped     tasted between willing
bodies     your tongue on my belly

i sweat now     fat-mouthed and sleek
the kiss lands as bodies smack     i
reach the space between your
lips     skin     seep into wet sheets

i see the easter bunny spilling out of her corset
this trip, pink-lipped, she owns us all
smoking a bong through a curly straw

curled on the cold ground with a boy on a leash
rope-marks cross my chest
flex and stretch

i weep in the river that runs
muddy sneakers
acid-witch climbing trees
spreadeagled snatching skyward

feet full of three-corner jacks
and still dancing

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