Alpha Island, Western Australia
Thousands of secret years created this place
and now I can only stay an hour
due to one microsecond of rage.
The 1950s were still Australia’s childhood,
a warped chrysalis, and independence
was a schoolchild’s optimistic poetry,
a naked abstraction to dream about;
sixty kilotonnes ripped that doll to pieces
and the radioactive dust from its heart
floated in a fourteen-kilometre cloud
across the continent like a giant hand
knocking on every door to distribute toys.
Published in New Word Order
S.C. Flynn 