Treading Earth

by Jennifer Mills

An excerpt from the first


this amber land


let me draw you a mud map. here, it shows
where the sand will suck at your feet.
this path, roo-tracked, follows water; water so old
it has taken to lying in the ground.


at the bottom of the mean hill, turn into the
foreign weed makes a neat dead meadow.
here, plants clamber out of rusted tins and bones
they scratch themselves, go back to sleep


you will come to the outskirts of Broken Glass Country
a small, bald hill where even the rock has been smashed
into shards of shale. if you skirt this amber land at dawn,
turn, and eye it from the west, you'll see it lit up ...

ebook

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Jennifer Mills is the author of five books: the novels The Airways (Picador, 2021), Dyschronia (Picador, 2018; shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award for Literature and the 2019 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel), Gone (2011), and The Diamond Anchor (2009), and a collection of short stories, The Rest is Weight (2012). In 2012 Mills was named a Best Young Australian Novelist by the Sydney Morning Herald and in 2014 was awarded the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship from the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Mills lives on Kaurna Yerta.