Hot Desk Extract: Because it’s not about the oranges

Because it’s not about the oranges

A collection. A collision of chaos and courage. A reflection in four parts. Gendered violence and power imbalance infiltrate our houses, workplaces, bureaucracies, streets — and these pages. So often insidious, the ensuing trauma traverses generational divides, class and race, warping our panoramas. Indeed, the ‘blanket of trauma stretches’,[1] but this work implores us to ‘hem its edges, unpick its seams’[2] — with humour, hardiness and hope.

Despite its rawness, the imagery of eviscerated beasts and cavernous eye sockets offers consolation, while the orangest oranges, greenest grass and shiny metallic surfaces heighten the tensions of fraught human relationships— intimacy without equality, sex without safety.

The authorial voice, unwavering and acerbic, advocates verse as a mode of survival, and a definitive call for social justice. Private spaces become public, what was rusted shut is prised open with the aim of connectivity and outreach. Ironic in tone and accessible in language, the titular poem Because it’s not about the oranges, rides the complex undercurrents of unspoken lives.

[1] Rachael Hambleton, Overland, Issue 245

[2] Ibid.