Don College
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87-121 Watkinson St
Devonport TAS 7310
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Email: don.college@education.tas.gov.au
Phone: 03 6424 0200

Butterscotch Rhino - English Writing 3C

Butterscotch Rhino is an anthology that publishes writing from our English Writing 3C classes. Below is a selection of poems from the first writing task.

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February Light

The scent of sea water.
Wind ruffles my hair,
rows upon rows
of blunt needle teeth.

A weave of sunlight
wraps around me
like the steam
from a boiling pot.

The ocean sparkles,
quartz tumbling through
an endless blue.
It glides up the shore,
shatters against
a parade of rocks.

Seaweed litters the sand,
lumpy from footsteps
of past wanderers,
like small dunes across the shore.

A gull drinks from a stream;
another splashes in the murk.
They explode into the sky,
startled by dogs
weaving through legs and rocks:
an impromptu dance.

Sarah Maxwell

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Cubby House

Once, paint brushes in hand, they wreaked havoc,
staining the wooden walls with Dad’s leftover paint,
their hair, blonde and unkempt,
caught up in the hurricane of colours.
A shower of glitter on her skin,
cheap glue peeled off like an old scab.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ would echo through the sky.
One after one they would pile inside,
leaving the sky dyed a rich crimson.

Now, it is home more to spiders than memories,
the wind chime, a dull jangle of cobwebs and rust.
Paint becomes confetti on the floor
and the door sways from exhausted hinges.
The curtain crumbles,
brittle and delicate in my hand.

Nicola Bonney

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2 a.m. in my Room

I awake, choking on the black.
It floods the room;
dust-clogged model ships sink in its embrace,
a carved eagle drowns.

Through a wall of vines and leaves
the moon lances the night in thin gleams
and my room fades in its black ichor.

Swimming between ribbons of white,
a moth’s drifting flutter.
It is the mumbles of a madman,
a slurring sailor on a barnacled pier,
the ramble of a tele-evangelist
one motel-room over,
a hazed junkie fumbling for the next hit.

Rhett Clark

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Sleeping Beneath the Stars

You two lie beside me
on flimsy foam mattresses,
observing the quiet black sky,
flecked with fey jewels,
sparkling like sun on water,
as we spill our hearts in gentle voices.
The faint lowing of a restless cow
and the rich scent of churned earth
drift to us on a midnight breeze,
sharp against our cheeks,
but our bodies exchanging heat
beneath heavy blankets
like some strange currency.
A streak of flame,
a wish made.
Can I tell you
how wonderful this is,
as if the whole world
has fallen away,
leaving only us
and the stars,
like three sailors
lost at sea.

Emily Crack

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Fried Rice for Chickens

Edna, Winnifred and Gladys-May,
their feathered crowns,
rest on heads bursting with empty space.
And my mother,

the frizzy-haired conductor,
oversees her wayward orchestra.
With a flick of the hand
and a smattering of grain,
the ladies erupt into a crescendo of feathers,
to the applause of my mother’s smile.

Sautéed carrots,
browned mince,
sweet corn:
neat rows on the soft grass.

The afternoon air wilts.
Perfectly sliced watermelon,
pink as my mother’s nose,
dry in the scorch.
$8 blueberries,
scattered in the dirt.

The neighbourhood cat,
continues its tightrope walk,
skirting the perimeters of mum’s guard.
Never deterred from her watch,
my mother sinks further
into the soft earth.

Tianah Hill

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Chillies

Shoes lined up against the wall,
as though awaiting their execution.

The door comes in, I go out.
The air hits me, trying to start a fight. 

On the horizon, Earth’s two
blue bodies meet.
Gravel underfoot,
like crunching potato chips.

Within the chicken wire, a green mess;
tomatoes threaten to collapse
under their own pride.
Have the chillies grown yet?

I used to think cucumbers grew underground –
used to.
Their leaves like a dad’s stubble,
shoved up against the wire.

Upon the hill, a wheelbarrow older than myself,
rusty, rotting, with faded white text.
Is that an E? an F?

In it, a green cityscape rises,
and across the potholed leaves,
a trail, like an oil leak.

If I were not myself,
I could stay here for hours.
Beautiful, lush, but it bores me.
And there are no chillies.

Cooper Draney