Megan Cartwright is an author and teacher, based in Canberra (Ngunnawal and Ngambri country). Her poetry has featured in print and online in publications including Blue Bottle Journal, Broken Antler Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Cordite Poetry Review, Island Magazine, and Verandah Literary & Art Journal. She is the 2025 winner of the Tina Kane Emergent Writer Award.
The Weigh-in
Women line the break-wall, stone silhouettes edged by twilight.
The men return. They bring the ocean, soured by sweat.
The catch is suspended, the shark’s ammonia mouth agape
and cavernous as the possibility of death to the living.
A prolapsed midden of entrails. Measurements are chalked.
Swift butchery, crude cuts, fingers numbed in icy slurry.