Gippsland, Victoria
I remember him
coming down
the hill,
a lop-sided thing,
sort of rickety
as he bumped
towards us –
from where his father
lay bloodied,
neck scythed
like pampas weed
and his mother
leaning over,
a scream choking
the muscles
in her neck,
now taut and roped
and her red
wash-day hands
still clutching
at an apron of pegs.
He passed us, unseeing
coming down
to a new hell.
Unquick, undead, with oyster eyes, he surfs
a toppled tombstone then lurches and trundles
through the poplars, unshapes himself like
an octopus to shimmy through the iron grille
of the perimeter then negotiates a rope-bridge
between definitions: of being and non-being,
immanence and evanescence, the engendered
and the cobbled-together, a zonked mis-stepping
bi-pedal, his flipped orbs miming introspection,
his ragged dentition snapping at shadows.
If he hadn’t been wiped clean of awareness
like a knife, to make him a mere instrument
of the dark forces, to prowl the mean streets of
eschatology, he would know he was doomed
and could stride from his shelter into an unpeopled
waste, like Captain Oates taking one for the team.
But a poignant scenario belongs in another studio.
In this one he’s a pop-up transplant clinic
harvesting useful parts for the highest bidders
with scraps for himself to keep him ticking over.
His to protect and serve those near-dead masters
who consume the living.
Anyway, a letter. So some news: we fade, hair and pixels from photographs of photographs, held in trembling hands by a kindly Old Man, his fingertips yellowing. But this is not news for you. And what of the yellowing? All fingertips are dark and so, according to what the light from every open doorway told you, is the future.
Did Diamant read you a Yiddish version of the man whose barn and soul burnt the night he praised himself for his fortune? Sent to hell, that man asked for a drink of water from a saint. I’m sure you’d have told him, That gate, my friend, was open, but I’m now about to close it . . . Like that man, after I read The Trial I thought I knew everything. But I couldn’t explain it to anyone; The Trial or everything. So I write and write, dismantling myself, the Other, significance and sense.
Am I an insect or just a person of no consequence? Continual questioning makes me think I have consequence, but the consequence of that, you might have said, is this: Who are you to say what I might have said? But while I’m questioning, here’s another: did you imagine a life without living?
We sweat, we die, we make ourselves eat our meals, we work, we die, we write and die and cough and forget our manuscripts. Seagulls bay for blood, insects smile in beds, and both dream of albatrosses, carrying stones to lands where no one writes Annual Reports, chips are spat on and children munch bugs for fun and don’t exist, where even existence does not exist. And I, the I you left me with, takes strange comfort in the blank eyes of servants and maids in gold-plated suits and ties, insured against future losses, stock market crash test dummies, they’re safe in the idea they’re here, not in the Otherworld that both refuses them and to be.
Here, where money buys them, they scrap their souls, secure in the knowledge bargain bins are taken to the curb, but rubbish trucks won’t arrive; they’re driven by ghosts of ghosts who give each other respectful nods, who read and write burning manuscripts, while the idea of heaven persists, which surely must be hell for them.
Look, it’s been a longer letter than I expected. I thought I’d stand a moment at your gate, ajar as always, light creeping through, as only light can, your voice tunneling from the past: It’s cold, I’ll close the gate . . . But you’re telling lies. I’m going in, but now my finger’s stuck. You’ll have to tear it off to shut me out. Go on, do it: I know it’s better to go through life without a finger than for my tongue to go up in flames.
Don’t squint your eyes at me in the mornings
This is where you want me, perched on your shoulder
With a wing splayed behind your head
I have clawed at your skin since seventeen
Waiting for the weekly feed.
So what there are droppings down your back
That make you reel on a Saturday?
So what there are dead mice in your pockets?
My feathers cast out a spotlight
They are there for you
So do as you’re told!
Drink! Offer to buy another pint
And then—down! Shot! Swoop for the feed
I’ll save the bloody carcass for my young
There is wisdom in this savagery
And you know it when it hits
Do it! Too-wit! Too-woo! Too-hoo-to-hoo!
You… twit.
I am beautiful
Mid-air, arched back
The rise of my wings over a pointed bill
Catch the black of my eyes above
I see you shouting and thrashing your arms
Where I want you
I will not break my stare
The bar lamps flare at my pearly feathers
Tell me I am not a kind of angel
—And just what tired animal are you?
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I crack myself open and pour out walnuts and honey.
In the mornings I overflow with sugar and lemon.
Afternoons I spill crushed almonds and cloves.
At night I sleep with the dust of pistachios and cinnamon pressed against my cheek.
Baking is always about hands.
Do not forget this.
I thread the spell with granules of light.
Spin fire into crystal and dust it with sesame.
Tease out darkness and soften it into dough.
Spell work is about hands.
Do not forget this.
I kill them every day.
Anoint them with slivers of almonds, cloves and arterial warmth.
Kill them out of vengeance. Wake up overflowing pistachios, cinnamon and decay.
Kill them out of love, walnuts and honey.
Madness, you say.
Mercy, the word spirals through my chest.
Murder is about hands.
Do not forget this.
I leave the baklava to burn.
Pull out the fig, apple and pear ambrosia cake
with the pomegranate, grape, and honey cream nectar.
It is their favourite.
8 arms with six legs and a talon as sharp as gall-blastocystic-glass,
their mouths full of words: decay, cannibalism, churning soliloquy,
siblings, now a nest waiting for a mother-vulture-canine kind.
Wolves howling like a wind, puffing to wash the sea away
from this shore, stranded were jelly-squishes, star-stimulating-
molluscs, plastic-nose turtles, lighter-head sea gulls, and a ghoul-mask.
Worms in orgasm, as wasp becomes lily, pollen becomes sugar,
canola becomes colloidal corpuscles, red blood bone marrow
becomes sickle-cell man ready to stab anyone binge-eating.
Cobra fangs displaying mimesis and esoteric myths, meditative
and arousing, karma spreading as orange blossoms in bright-red
turmeric, contaminating this land where Gautama preached.
Plant-based diet fanatics fornicate with paleo-girl, dancing in hula,
drinking piña-colitis, growing their breasts in sync, savouring
every bite, every flavour, every gustatory layer of aspartame.
Bible-preachers selling all-wares, from electricity bills, hydroponic
waters, beluga-belly sea salt, organically-sourced vita-minerals
that destroy, devour, and defy carcino-kinetic ideologues.
Pulpit-shaming electo-reps vouched for their insolence
and diploma in climate distractions, detractions of climate,
and shape-shifting-phenomena called techno-remediation.
6-legged vampiric keyboards, crushing every serotonin-inducing
morning glory as cacophonous beeps, clicks, tap, tap, tap,
of swipe-left-to-right-match or right-to-left-ignore equipment.
What-the-fact, the vulture-canine momma of all 8 changelings
has arrived, becoming a fairy, becoming a genius brat-bat-nacle,
becoming kid-genius-tech-giant anatomically-un-correct mother.
almost real. The metal detectors posed no problem, except for one – an unkempt gent whose ragged underside was held in place by the rusted steel clasp of a belt, fastened from outside around his waist. He waited behind, disappointment evident to the rest on his expressionless face.
It was only as they reached the vault that they came across four men, identical in iron-pressed get-ups, holsters heavy with truncheons and black plastic radios. The guards regarded the shambling horde with a specific sort of fear; a nostalgic, under-the-bed, inside-the-wardrobe kind
of scared. They asked, “what are you doing here?” and the assembled effigies stared, unspeaking, unprepared for the confrontation. At last, their ranks broke; the closest of them unpicked his stitched-sackcloth mouth, and spoke. “We are looking for crops to watch, and fields to stand in.”
The watchmen didn’t know what to say to that. Soon, tripped alarms brought the coppers rushing in, a din of barked orders, officers decked out in riot gear, brandishing firearms. The scarecrows went quietly, remained calm as they were bundled up in car boots, pushed into trucks, to be taken
back to their farms. As the last of those compost-stuffed mannequins was dragged through the doors of a van, he slipped; felt the grips of the men who carried him tighten – had time to wonder, before he slumped to the floor, what type of bird their uniforms had been designed to frighten.
We’re not in wonderland anymore, Alice. – Charles Manson
Many of us gathered here, silent beyond reflection.
Heavy breath, your instructions that weigh too much,
the stained grains beneath this carpet of knives
buried in the Californian desert.
I want more of you than eyes and breath
in this makeshift house you have built,
where we all live terrified and in love.
Your voyeuristic gaze against skin,
the collision of flesh and trembling breath,
your eyes fixed on us and on her as you enter
for the first time, every time.
How my body shook in the airless haze
of your arms then, shaking again now, the way we all do.
Together I want to climb the length of the blade
that won’t ever come out.
I bid you prick these thorns
into these women’s likenesses
for they have upset you.
It feels so good to press and twist
into the imprinted wooden faces,
imagining the thorn’s poison
spreading through the bloods’
stream, the women complaining
of pains, then fever, the drips
of sweat forming, bodies falling
to wooden floors, even then
not seeing grime in the cracks
they neglected to scrub away,
clutching at their table legs, their children’s legs
begging for water, finding
the strength to point their crooked fingers
at the house on the edge of town –
‘She did it! It was her –
the witch!’ And me standing there,
a poppet myself, clutching
their mottled likenesses.
When she was eighty, we learned,
our Gran confronted a man
at her window at night.
He was from round the bend.
His house was down by the Banoon train,
the trellis out front displaying unnatural
ornaments: two mismatched picture shapes,
one, a hunter with a rifle, black
with white outlines in the style
of a practice target in profile.
The other was a huge, gaudy butterfly placed
as if the hunter were about to shoot it.
But about this night of confrontation—
years after, Gran confided to one of us, off-hand,
how she’d lain in her bed, and then
a shadow head had appeared
at the window
and she had spoken to the head in the darkness:
I know you’re there and I know who you are.
At this, the shadow head departed.
The man went on to kill
a man and
a woman
and bury their bodies on Mount Glorious.
•
With my head up this close to the mirror I think, God,
my nose is just like my grandmother’s, and I remember
a time I studied her—one morning in her hallway, in the light
from the guest room’s door—I looked at her head
and thought on, extrapolated from, the looks
of those from the north of England. But really I saw nothing.
I was just piecing, reaching. I was only about twelve.
•
Next to that flat figure with the gun
that winged thing looked exultant.
I always noticed it on the way
and knew it wasn’t right.
It wasn’t a joke, it was stating
a view of the world this weirdo thought
we’d better heed. That’s how I felt as a kid.
In the years since I learned
of this encounter at the window,
I’ve thought how she never told
this story into our record as I would,
as I do. This happened! Hell’s bells!
She let it out eventually but only that one time
and it was grown so much by then, that secret,
into a troll thing. Magic potato. Humous
jewel. We could use it now, I think she knew,
because its power was strong from her
conserving it so, without tending it.
Often I tell myself when worried,
Wait but do not consider.
This is how a secret grows underground.
•
In the otherworld, that huge butterfly
casts a shadow above our little craft.
When the thing moves on, so shall we.
The hunter was never aiming at the butterfly;
it had swooped in to shield a soul. The protector
force-fielding, halting time to provide an exit.
•
In that mirror that makes me into my ancestor, I question
whether I could dismiss the murderer from my window.
In the mirror my ancestor
scrutinizes me using my own eyes.
(Did you know this is why our ancestors
no longer need their own bodies?)
If the murderer comes to me,
I will sleep inside
while she looks out
my windows and replies.
At 11 pm I stand at my window
looking out at the moon,
my favourite night-time ritual,
while in the flat above mine
a blue whale,
heart the size of a car,
sings a mournful song.
I imagine it is crying for a lover.
I know what that feels like.
3 pm – peak siesta time.
I close the windows allowing
my well-lit living room to darken.
The couch, a perfect conduit for
my afternoon nap. And as I fall into
a dream of my design
I hear horses canter and gallop
above me.
7 am – fresh coconuts are being grated.
5 pm – they are moving furniture.
7 pm – someone is yelling.
9 am – why do they keep drilling holes?
All the brick and concrete between us
isn’t doing its job.
Somedays it is a testament to my whimsy –
“That sounds like an elephant farting.”
“They must have adopted a family of wild geese.”
Other days are just fury –
“Seriously, how many coconuts can one family eat?”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
My parents blame the kids,
but I have a better theory.
My inconsiderate neighbors
are unverified poltergeist activity.
The speed of light
is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second.
The speed of sound, at sea level,
is approximately 343 meters per second.
The speed of a 9mm bullet, leaving the muzzle,
is approximately 380 meters per second.
* * * *
He didn’t hear the shot.
He never heard the warning.
He saw the light—
and then he followed it.
‘What does it mean to protest suffering, as distinct from acknowledging it?’ – Susan Sontag
Since many of the plotlines explored throughout my plays
have started leaking into my current reality, I’m now publicly
admitting to embracing other people’s anguishes for the sake
of my own creative endeavours. Over the past decade,
I’ve consistently been celebrated as a prophetic & iconic
playwright — a trademark I still justifiably hold.
However, since the themes I’ve so realistically & poetically
portrayed throughout my works have tragically
begun to impact upon my daily routines —
my gratification with such accolades may not fully
be appreciated without such a declaration.
I’ve experienced a great loss, which I choose not to discuss
at this point in time — but I’ll admit that until recently,
I’ve always felt more comfortable writing about
the lives of others — from a distance, but most especially
while my subjects are inhabiting their own homes.
It’s not unfitting to mention that after years of dinner
invitations & appearances — I’ve been praised as not only
being an exceptional conversationalist, but a much-desired guest.
During such dinner parties, I’ve always offered to wash-up
after each course, yet I’ve always been denied this pleasure —
so I end up refilling my glass & observing the performance
of domestic politics. Over the years, I’ve only ever contributed
to one squabble — when an amateur actor, cast in one of my plays
premiering at the time, didn’t recognise me & vehemently
began questioning the ethics of the script — which was based
upon a widely reported & terribly violent incident.
The actor’s naïve soliloquy continued until I politely remarked
that there was not only passata saucing the upper region
of their lip, but also the tip of their nose. After the actor fled
to the bathroom to wipe away now, not only the tomato purée,
but a solid amount of mascara — my fellow comrades reassured
& praised me for my honesty. I was then reminded about all
the positive reviews the show in question had received.
I’ll have to conclude this admission shortly, but do I hope
this announcement will be respected & will allow me to continue
my quest for writing authentic dialogue & descriptions —
something I truly believe is often unattainable for people directly
experiencing the duress which makes for such interesting
material that I possess an ability to curate & represent upon a stage.
As proof of my skills, I can testify that I’ve received numerous
writing grants & government financial support — even patronage,
which, as you’ll reasonably understand, I’ve not been able
to question or reject. My hand-to-mouth existence prior
to my fruitful reputation isn’t unlike the precariousness
of those begging for money while resting against the entrance
to the building where I’ve recently commenced my latest
writer’s residency & like most artistic entrepreneurs — I can
offer nothing, as I believe carrying coins grinds my inspiration
down & closer to the pavers, which I’ve strived brick-hard
to lift myself up & away from for the sake of my creative practice.
Out on the perimeter of my bed their eyes glow in the dark. I tried tracing the lines between them once, like staring into the starry night to read the horoscope of my horror. But they never stay still long enough to ascertain their precise formations. And besides if somebody told you they could reveal the exact moment of your death would you really want to know?
Astrologists sell you the dreams you want to have. The night sells me the promise that tomorrow is another day. But tomorrow has always been another day, until it isn’t. For weeks now I’ve been sleeping only four or five hours a night, my bed a drift-less ghost ship, the captain a cartographer of catastrophe.
I wake with the sun and the moon standing over me, the hatches of my eyes smeared with the sticky black residue of receding night terrors. They don’t realise I can hear them but I can.
The sun says, Is he dead yet? The moon answers, It’s your turn to poke him with a stick. The sun replies, I can’t believe I set myself on fire for this. The moon feels like it might cry. The moon wants to cry but it can’t remember water or what it’s even for, tear ducts as dry and dusty as a long abandoned water slide.
Wearing a fake fur,
her greying hair unwashed,
a T2 bag at her feet,
Emma sits in Self Preservation,
hunched over her iPhone.
She’s still thinking of phoning Eric
now that the bruise below her left eye has faded.
Eric had insisted things will be better
once he got his hands on a gun—
claimed that he’s cased the Lennox Street milk bar
every day for the last month—
the till’s a honeypot,
will bankroll them to Noosa.
But Eric has always been
more puff than progress,
more skateboard than limousine.
Feeling sorry for oneself—
Emma has had years of practice.
She walks through the Treasury Gardens,
sits on a park bench,
tells herself that she’s worth more
than any scavenging pigeon,
will win more from this world
than crumbs and flight.
When, in the franchise,
Edward becomes wraith-like
you are inconsolable.
I make you school sandwiches
with blood-red sauce and polony.
With the sauce I draw a love heart
and embellish its middle with a cursive ‘E’.
There, I say, for now he is safe in your sandwich.
Ok, it’s not a cloven-pine or an attic
or any other high-styling bolt-hole
but it is portable, economical,
disposable –oh and also something else–
it feeds you.
You are convinced,
or at least put on a show
of being convinced,
this spell will hold
in soft white halves
for now. And later
I picture you sinking
your nine-year old incisors
into the sticky sweet
legend of love, ingesting its messed up
promise, leaving its tired wrappings
in the bottom of your bag.
While we live, we ourselves are inhabited
– William Bryant Logan, ‘Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth’
In the earth, prepared and silent, what will I
be offering you? It’s said the menu opens
with the liver and the brain, for their wealth
of enzymes and water, the heart
before the bones. But so many of you
are already here at this soft table, always hungry,
unfussy. I’ve been feeding you protein,
fibre, starch, sugar, paper and ink,
self-consciousness, the crimson jolt of the rosella
in the leafless tree, my own dying cells,
hesitation in the face of violence, more water,
the scent of the skin of the one I love,
confusion with almost everything else.
And what will you make of all this
turning? Warm compost, what remains.
The day you left you said I never looked at you like I look at Godzilla
O.K.
Point taken
But
I still look at you
I look at you like Godzilla looks at a big building or
Tokyo
Which really should be enough
It used to be enough
But it’s not
And this house is too big
And it’s full of tapes that have already been watched
I’ve got no one to rewind them for me
This house is littered with them
I put the first tape in and started the thing in reverse
Godzilla wasn’t knocking over buildings anymore
He didn’t ruin anything at all he just sorta
Fixed stuff
He built things
He picked up his feet and created life
He doesn’t stomp on anything
I watched him help a giant bird back into the sky
I watched him breath a blue ray of light and
Wham
A lighthouse
I think it was for us
I’ve been watching all night
His tender hand builds cities
I love Godzilla, and I love you
But now I love reverse Godzilla too
So I gained him in losing you
But I would trade him for just one tape of us
I’d rewind it every day
Every time I
have a pap smear
it is a nightmare
I got my first one at uni
The doctor asked if there was any chance I was
pregnant
I said no
I am a Gay
She said
“oh good
we probably don’t need to swab for STDs then”
As if lesbianism
makes me immune
to diseases
The second time
the doctor told me to sing
to relax
She said it would
make the procedure
more comfortable
This year
my doctor
struggled to find my cervix
“You won’t find it”
I say
“It’s a myth
Like a saucy Loch Ness Monster”
To distract me
from the pain
she asked me what my comedy is like
and
if it is hard to work freelance
What have these blunt fingers touched
what made this heart beat faster
in the flesh chest that grew it?
Before they became mine: became
the motley coat that is me?
Did this palm stroke softer flesh
in reciprocal love? My hands,
(if mine they be through mere possession)
may turn black from the kiss of frost.
Even these broad splayed toes
propelling me through snow.
My flesh spreads away from itself,
as if it too finds the latticework
of my woven skin disgusting.
He chases me now, a blind dog
chained to me by loathing.
Yet he sewed these fingers
with his own. These toes he assayed
as a surveyor uses an alidade
to map continents, or mere streets.
He loved the precious detail,
retracts himself from the whole,
and would smear me on the ice.
Me, the only one ever born
without a mother, made
by pure scientific fumbling.
And so we run. Always north.
This sharpened North
tears my skin with teeth
always all its own. My own teeth
tasted flesh I never saw;
this tongue may speak languages
that even he can’t speak.
I am the king of second-hand
The prince of second-feet.
My goldfish died
the night Dad pushed the fridge over.
The machine lay on its side,
exposing lines of dusty metal coils
that were somehow terrifying,
– all those parts, not meant to be seen.
It was the surprise of the violence,
mostly, that became the earworm;
my tiny brother screaming inside-out
from the cot across the hall;
the smell of shit swelling like a balloon
inside our old wooden house.
Through the kitchen door slit, a
woman I recognised as my mother,
moving deliberately in a rigid calm;
gathering up her purse,
stepping over the broken pot-plant,
a silver crucifix bouncing from her chest.
Through the open window, the sweet
rot of wild jasmine seeping thick:
an entire suburb
groaning under the weight.
