“I wanted that feel of travelling on the open road, getting beaten up, getting shot up, and having to have the bullets gouged out and cauterised and all of those things. So that’s the kind of mood I was aiming for.  Abandonment and isolation.”

• We didn’t have space to fit in Bron’s great interview with James Stanwix, but you can read the full thing in our new digital Extra at http://www.fremantleherald.com

What did we expect?

As you fall beside me with your whole body, your

hands and mouth shaking, I pull your name

from somewhere deep inside my chest.

I say to you: Call me all your precious names

as I lie here, slowly dying, not trying to be dramatic –

but a gunfight is a gunfight.

I promise I will stay here if you call me all those names I love,

my darling, my heart, my dragonfly,

as my blood pools, thick and glossy.

Love like this isn’t harmless.

It’s driving into the haze of the distant horizon,

the slow malevolence of encroaching loss

building like a music score.

We want to stop this, but we can’t. You,

riding shotgun, my blood sticky on the back seat,

my body failing and falling again.

Look at me, shot up and desperate,

with the only heart I know

pounding in my ears.

We only have minutes left to finish this,

the clock is ticking down,

and I am bleeding out.

Washing blood from your hands,

you take your knife,

gouge bullets and cauterise my skin.

Our names are bloody stars,

you say through gritted teeth.

Our sky is full of exit wounds.

This is the only love we know.

Time beats down on us like a Meekatharra sun.

We will lose the girl in the final scene.

by BRON BATEMAN