Anger is the Safest Colour

Brooke Scobie

Brooke Scobie is a queer, auDHD, Goorie poet, kidlit author and multi-disciplinary creative living on Darkinjung land. Their work is a love letter to Country and to those marginalised by society, previously featured in publications like Overland Journal, Running Dog, Red Room Poetry, and SBS. They were a finalist for the 2023 David Unaipon award, achieved 2nd in the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize and have performed at the Sydney Biennale, Melbourne Writers Festival, and Queer Stories to name a few. Their debut middle-grade adventure series, Yarn Quest, was published by Penguin Books Australia in July 2024.

She is big
Stretching beyond horizon beyond dawn
Head tilts back and still cannot meet her eyes
Her teeth sharpened mountains of granite

She is thunder crack
Split earth
A thousand years of blood-stoked fire
Smoked salt oesophagus

She is deep space
Violence of quantum collision
Piss and spit boil held breath ruptures
Questions unanswered hang in dead-thought

She is nuclear war
Scorched earth sterility
Desolate atmosphere mutations
Fingernails torn from their beds

Few know that she is dusk
              true
She is small
The invisible time
                             untime
                                          all time
Shadowless quiet
Slow-flowing creek
Mountain’s breath
Rain-pocked sand
Bruised petals
Paperbark
Soft-bellied and heartsore
                             true
She is small
              i am small

But anger is the safest colour.

The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government initiative that supports sustainable cultural development in regional, remote, and very remote Australia. Regional commission were made possible by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, provided through Regional Arts Australia and Regional Arts NSW.

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