The only way you’re going to get this is to clamber in and heft it out, this thing, this beast, almost human in weight. Note the squish of sundried tomato between your teeth, throw a sweater across the room, tell your friend that’s the song you love and persuade them to get into the car and drive, goddamnit, pedal to the floor while the wind blows, as if it was the wind in a country and western song, as if it knew exactly what it was doing. You don’t get this on the internet or scraping calcified flour from those kitchen dishes; you can’t find it in the wayward piles of books stacked like skylines against your walls. Not even amongst these rumpled sheets, slightly stained and bruised, dishevelled as a sewer cat. If you want this you’re going to have to scrabble on the inside and bring your monsters to the air where they’re as warty as you ever were, where the world can see them belch and barf and rot. If you want this you’re going to have to go in and get it. Get down on your knees and dig.

Jane Flett’s poetry collection Quick, To The Hothouse is published by Dancing Girl Press.