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Heart necklace

Josie/Jocelyn Suzanne

I cradle the slag
of its making – the chain
thin, silver catch
mining flesh. I say, There are
no dinosaur bones here, you
jerk: the sediment is
too wet, any chalk/lime is
undigested. My neck, unlike
a diplodocus, unlike
a deity in the hard mold
of an eagle, will gently
let you drop.
You dig there looking
after the joins
delineating a Cretaceous substrate
from the rest of
Earth. You observe
particles of meteorite dividing
my neck/bole
from the mine that is not
my body, a flowering
of bismuth, a good/protecting
radiation/topsoil.
JOSIE/JOCELYN Suzanne is a writer/translator living in Naarm. Their work has appeared in Cordite, Australian Poetry Journal and Overland, among others. They are one of the recipients of the 2022 Next Chapter Fellowship. They are a non-binary transfemme living on unceded Wurundjeri land.