Over a year she chronicles in two dimensions,
names, and smudges :
Bramble Cay Melomys
little rat, you were her first, mosaic-tailed, indigenous
to your Torres Strait, and — “dubious honour”— first
Australian species victim to rising seas, she traces
your erasure
Bushwren xenicus longpipes, little wren,
the second, each feather’s hairlike threads, curled claw,
startle of white brow, her pencil needle-sharp, six hours a
day, your specimen eye growing cloudy as
she traces your erasure
Plectostoma
sciaphilum, you were the third, tiny Malaysian land snail,
your wary head and foot reaching out from beneath
that exquisite coil-ridged turban, they quarried away
your limestone karst, she traces your erasure
Christmas Island Pipistrelle,
the twelfth, so thumbsmall you could fit into a child’s
pocket, dark mottled fur, five days it took to trace
you, five mere minutes fade you, tiny bat, into that
company of ghosts
Later, she will draw you again, and again,
haunted by your last unanswered call
Note : “Some species haunt her more than others.” –Keely Jobe, “The
Art of Refusal: Lucienne Rickard’s Extinction Studies”