Best mates lived on pasta, porridge and bread, shared groceries, studied huddled in sleeping bags, blasted U2, Counting Crows, Crowded House, and The Cranberries, danced with twenty sweaty friends as books fell from shelves, read poetry in the bay window seat, marveled through naked rendezvous beside the fireplace, dunked on the nine-foot rim, jumped from the front yard brick wall, shared single beds with girls, drank beer and port, shaved heads in celebration when the Mean Machine won the Commonwealth Games relay, walked to the jetty to watch the sun set over Lake Wendouree, stumbled home from the Miller’s Arms through the cemetery.
Irish-Australian poet Nathanael O’Reilly teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Arlington. His eleven collections include Landmarks (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024), Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Downingfield Press, 2024), Boulevard (Downingfield Press, 2024), Dear Nostalgia (above/ground press, 2023), (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020), and Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017). His work appears in over 120 journals and anthologies published in 15 countries, including Anthropocene, Cordite, The Elevation Review, Identity Theory, Mascara, New World Writing Quarterly, Southword, Trasna, and Westerly. He is poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian / New Zealand Literature.