Summer

Peaches rot on the countertop.

Juice glosses the mock-wood cabinet doors,

Catching flies, and the sticking heat

Glues my feet to the yellowed linoleum.

A mouth in the rent-found floor

Moans in the heat

While geckos smack their lips.

A locust chews the flyscreen in the dayroom.

Mum warns us not to run down our hallway

Because the sliding doors are sheet glass panes.

We could fall through them

And haemorrhage on the concrete patio.

Wire shelves rattle against the smoke-stained walls,

Rust blooming from under their metallic skin.

I open a tin of tomatoes and crush them in my hands,

Careful not to cut my fingers against the rim.

You didn’t teach me,

I taught myself.

High saturation daytime TV

Calls from the wall.

Simmer and stir.

The mouth yawns in storms

And threatens to trip me into the sliding doors.

I can’t see it

But I know its gums are black and mouldering.

Ella Kratzer is a poet, short story writer and professional hobbyist from the Northern Rivers. She’s a fan of the gory and gruesome but doesn’t mind the odd mushy romance, as long as there’s a tonne of flesh-eating metaphors. Ella is studying a BA in creative writing and popular musicology at UQ, and is a 2023 recipient of the Kingshott-Cassidy Poetry Award Scholarship. She is currently Jacaranda X Underground Theatre’s second Writer-In-Residence.