Depression

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Carl Boon

So we thought through the getting-

worse time of blackbirds & the voices
of our parents. The uncovered,
unadorned kitchen table shivered

more gently; the trains, it seemed,

had slowed. Father stopped brushing

the mud from his shoes when he left

in the morning, moving forth
into the nowhere-gray. Most nights

he returned with a newspaper
& a beard. Sometimes he didn’t return

at all & we didn’t ask why. Mother
clutched her rosary beads & filled

our bowls halfway with soup, insisting

always we scrub our skin well

but the powdery soap burned, dismayed

us. I concealed peanuts & raisins
in the spine of my geometry book,

hungry before lunchtime.
Sundays were the worst, homilies

on patience & frugality, how they suffered

in the desert with nothing inside them

but words. Communion meant
dark comedy: not enough bread,

not enough wine. Father despised

the priest when he drank up
what we had not. In April 1933
I tore the backyard rose bush up

& planted apple seeds there, dreaming

of pie with cinnamon & milk. In May
—
impatient—I ate the fledgling sprouts

myself, chewing them slowly. How bitter,

how it was not quite to be a man.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Suburban Fantasy

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Michele Seminara

You maltreated

my poor
body
your
savage
love filling me with
child

force-
ing
me down on
your filthy
mat-
ress

stinking with
vile
blood

and

roots
you know nothing

pack your
things This is my house
go


* An erasure poem from pages 170-171 of Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, Penguin, 1970

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Edgelands

Posted on February 1, 2018 by A D Harper

Nobody ever goes back
to where it started, kissing
cramped against trees behind
garages and shops,
on the corner of concrete and nature,
trapped on the border

of desire and the ecstatic,
those fires preserved
in scattered coded notes
in diaries from years ago
but what was urgent
and consuming then became

a memory, the past, the spark
you promised you’d rekindle
growing fainter as you stare
awake into the comfortable
dark. The edgelands of the night
are cold and sharp.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

P1 Licence

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Maris Depers

just past the houses on Avondale Road
into the paddocks
where the speed zone graduates to eighty
and the road can finally inhale
no longer smothered by the Colourbond corset
 
the black memories appear
 
sacred lines etched across gravel skin
late-night initiations
for the new houses on their subdivided march
whose windows cannot decipher
the markings
or their place
in the shifting
personal geography
 
from a distance
the rubber typography resembles
messy well wishes
bleeding onto the shoulder
of a Year 12 uniform
or the shaking words
you struggle to write
in sympathy cards
 
as the curtain closes on the farmland
and the bulldozers
carry it away

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Year Zero

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Davide Angelo

There’s liquid water on Saturn’s
moon, plumes vent from its south
pole. We’re waiting for somebody
to crawl out onto the reflective
tectonically deranged terrain,
hoping to nail God to dark matter.
Wherever you live, First Peoples’
painted faces search for evidence
of a collective past. In town halls,
hard edged abstractions of sacred
ceremonies hang on whitewashed
walls. Your migration occurs an infinite
number of times. Hordes of lachrymal
ancestors walk from communal fires
to factories. Natives are made
on process lines. Metal ores burn,
metal feeds metal—in overtime to zero
hour—the language of solidarity, brutal
upper hands, and visceral fictions.
There is a restlessness in you. Wrestle
your dialect to the ground. Wake
from the dreaming—of Sicily,
of San Vito, martyr, patron saint
of the ancient port.

Here is the outline of a forest,
the ghost of our Californian Bungalow.
I catch white butterflies in plastic
bags and pin them to a tree (of symbols).
Tell me it’s cruel, animals grieve too.
How many silences, how many memories
hide in a butterfly’s wing?
It’s the third house in the subdivision,
where you improvise and merge
into Colonial farmhouse vernacular
and announce, I’m going to die here
like an old dog, under the kitchen table.
We worship at the altar of David
Attenborough, laugh at old ideas, dream
of UFOs and life on other planets. Watch
the replay of the ‘incident’. A faceless man
wears black trousers and a white shirt,
holds shopping bags in each hand,
stands before a column of tanks.
He looks like you from behind. Tell me
there’s nothing to fear. A powerline
snaps in the windstorm, pours white
electricity into asphalt. Call the fire
brigade even though there isn’t a fire.

I will crack this dream wide
open. I see your ephemeral wonder.
A disembodied voice announces Alpha
Centauri C, the brightest star,
is gravitationally bound to two
other stars, but appears as a single
star to our unaided future eye.
On the East side, plough your farm,
on the west side, the Californian Bungalow
looks like a church, the octagonal spire
drops dead butterflies on me.
The blending of senses—Listen
to the colour, smell the Sun,
taste the viscous wind
through the leaves, formless
shadows of time itself—then a mouthful
of your Mediterranean Sea.
The Californian Bungalow stands
on the frozen edge of ancient
Enceladus, ninth moon of Saturn.
The new suburb sits in the crater,
liquid water beneath the ice, fracturing
with the strain of time
and tides. This is your best year.
You are the traveller, the immigrant
again—full of knowing.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Scales, Enclaves

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Ramon Loyola

I.
The scale that weighs my face tips towards
the spot where shadows mingle on the road,
on the pavement and on other strange faces.
It is a heavy face, amplitudinous, strange even
through the side windows of cars parked
on King Street this side of old Newtown
like transient turtles, waiting for the waves.
Where the eyes had been—the eyelashes
scaled down to mere tiny lines, the slits
that defied at first the whole of continents
they call Asia and Europe and Polynesia and
the Pacific Islands in their deceptive sheen
in the light, and underpinned at last the
indifference of strangers towards their
incongruity—could never find solace in
the teem and vagabond of the inner west.
I had been to St Clair and so had my eyes,
so had my face, where an interloping emu
or a small bovine would sometimes sun itself
in the pastured greens of the reserve leading
to our old backyard that my uncle used to
call his expansive workshop of dreams.

II.
To get to where my uncle’s family used to live
from the centre of the wide jungle of the city
is to travel back to the overlapping enclaves
of suburbia and into the cacophonous chatter
and diaphanous grip of suburban xenophobia
(or reverse claustrophobia). The train leading
to the leaf-laden streets lazily embarks at
St Marys, a locus of blatant tattoo parlours,
empty pop-up shops, disregarded playgrounds,
archaic street signs pointing to welfare offices
and even a lone shabby port of a Filipino shop.
If the train arrived belatedly, a mad flurry of
feet and huffing bodies trampled over stairs
to catch the every-thirty-minute shuttle bus
to the nearest main artery winding towards
the weird ensemble of cul-de-sacs on Meru
Place. The street name itself invoked the
fantasy of time and space drenched in the
strange fascination of memorials and old
kingdoms forever lost between the sea and
the shore. But it’s the street where my uncle
used to live, where I used to die little deaths.

III.
Going back to the place where I first breathed
the clear smogless air of Sydney, where the
clowns of indifference first danced in my head,
where the temerity of growing up quickly in time
blossomed like a flower in the misty nightscape,
proves to be an epiphany, a turning point of
sorts. It’s the same streets with wide girths
and clean gutters, the same grass landings full
of green lush and lavender tufts of wild weeds,
of houses of pseudo-affluence standing tall,
of swirling driveways and unfenced-in smirks
of tots on three-wheeler trikes that used to
shout chink chink as I walked by on the way
to the bus stop—an ugly memento of a moot
circumstance—and the same tree-lined memory
of a time when the inherently vicious nature
of man belied the freshly sweet air of new
freedom. Getting back to St Clair, it now
gives me clarity—I have grown old but wise
to the call of hate and regret. It’s the same
old place, but I am not the same. I am one,
for once, with wisdom in a haunted face.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

nothing happens in the burbs

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Anne Casey

we lay in bed talking about nothing
till two came stomping up the stairs
raging on about nothing
one hot on his heels
what did you do to him?
nothing!

after breakfast you put music on
Adele, Sam Cooke, Joe Cocker, Emilie Sande
they had nothing in common
but us
eleven a.m. on a Saturday
dancing barefoot in the kitchen
pretending there was nothing
going on

i lolled between one and two
while you did nothing in the garden
got two’s help to move it to the garage
nothing in the fridge so we cobbled something together
nothing on tv so we watched an expert panel
arguing vehemently about nothing the government
was doing nothing about while we shook our heads
knowing nothing would change

slouching on the couch
nothing between us
but the dog
eight feet in the air
a howl and crash from upstairs
what happened??!
nothing!! in unison, too quick
what was that all about? nothing at all

we split a cider
yours straight from the bottle
mine from a champagne flute
making an occasion out of nothing
till we went to bed, in no hurry
we had nothing on

and there is nothing, absolutely nothing
i would change

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

my street gets a haircut

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Harry Reid

my street is a Gemini
& tears itself up every night

#

my street decides against
the Westgate

gets cocky
drives stick up the Hume

#

my street avoids metaphor

#

my street calls the council
every morning & complains about
the colour of wheelie bins

#

my street auditioned for the part
of Ramsey Street in Neighbours

#

my street never texts me back

#

my street remembers
when the dogs won the flag in 1954

my street went to the pub
& bought everyone a round

#

my street bats fourth
bowls off-spin

#

my street keeps a journal

#

my street has worn the same pair of jeans
every day for 27 years

#

my street goes cruising in the park

#

my street watches number 45
sell for over a million

checks Pam out one last time
as she packs her station wagon

#

my street rides a motorbike

has a kind of ‘bad boy’ thing going on

#

my street is divided
on zoning permits

#

the wind rips through my street
these days

I see it walking home
arms full of groceries

#

my street sticks its head over the fence
asks for a hand w the garden

afterwards we share a beer
listen to the footy on the radio

#

my street gets nostalgic
looking over old photos

spends the last night of
August on the porch

#

I call my street in from the kitchen

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Chadstone Sonnet

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Philip Thiel

Bossini Minihaha Culture Kings
Australian Geographic Uniqlo
Surf Dive ’n Ski Pandora bras N things
GAP lululemon Tiffany & Co.
The Cupcake Queens Alannah Hill Colette
Forever New Aquila kikki.K
San Churro Koko Black La Belle Miette
Romano’s Coffee Starbucks Lindt Café
Miss Saigon Pappa Rich Grill’d Dumplings Plus
The Asian Store Roll’d Sushi Izakaya
The Reject Shop McDonald’s Toys R Us
Bed Bath N Table Pets at Chadstone Myer
Emporio Armani G-Star Raw
Red Valentino Hugo Boss Dior

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Walked Around the Old Neighbourhood

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Jonathan Bennett

Walked around the old neighbourhood
where not much had changed except
the trees are mature and the toddlers
are now swaying teens who took me in
with an off expression, maybe wondered
if I was familiar in a good or worrying way?
When I waved a ‘hi’ they phone bowed,
memories wiped, sneered away at memes.

There’s a shot on the front page today,
of new Syrian refugees volunteering
on a Habitat for Humanity build, sporting
matching t-shirts in the new subdivision.
How tidy everything can be made to feel
if you’d just experience it as a cropped
photograph, with a warm lede, a general
sense that the world is kindly after all.

Ai Weiwei is on PBS again but I’m not sure
we listened the last time round. People,
I’m worried. Concerned. He’s going to
feel ignored. We’ve been at this forever.
Surely some patterns are emerging?
What say we change for a short while
and see how it goes? We can always
revert back if we don’t like how it feels.

Walked around the old neighbourhood.
The dying woman’s house got flipped
and they ditched the ugly sixties shutters
thank god, and gave it a whole new
mid-century modern look. The old guy
that raked his leaves into the curb,
hosed down his driveway? He’s alive.
Waved eagerly. Asked me if I’d moved.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Boxing On

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Bruce Dawe

‘Little boxes, little boxes …’ – so went that sixties song,
along with other youthful Woodstock sneers
-and still suburbia’s moving right along,
undaunted, in both human hemispheres …

Media focus on those odd disputes
concerning trees, and rights-of-way and such
particularly, but suburbia refutes
claims such communities are out-of-touch.

Indeed, the spread of suburbia is ever
aware of the inner cities increasing cost,
challenging bland utopias and those clever
green dreams of urban dwellers hopelessly lost.

For most of my life, suburbia’s been my home,
and I still see new suburbs, east and west
(and north and south), defining themselves like families who come
seeking the better, hoping for the best,

Supposing in distance habitable space,
those things the clamorous outer life denies:
room to turn round twice and not grimace
and find some sympathy in unburdened skies …

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

View of the New Estates

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Brendan Ryan

Instead of church spires, mobile towers
offer reception on treeless ridges.
A scattering of solar panels glints
amongst the tessellated greys and browns.
Trees are kept to an acceptable height.
Each garden holds a two-year history
of yuccas, cordylines or three weeping birches.
No eucalypt spreads its arms above the spouting.

Only on the fringes are the houses let loose
spreading like rumours into paddocks
where grids of bitumen are gouged
out of clay, streetlights inserted, kerbing set
acres of clover and rye grass transformed into Ridge View –
a lifestyle to walk through to a map of the future
rendered in display homes and flickering wide-screens.
Perhaps the finest suburban view
is seen from a circling flight,
a mosaic of ochre and charcoal tiled roofs
reminding us how hardened the landscape seems.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

The Blossoms of Retail

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Jill Jones

We become our shopping
something that’s not quite feeling
a semi-emotion as if underwater
or near tears unable to breathe or drown.

Are we living in the present
tense or another kind of mood?
Where are the horses, the plains?
All is now the ting machine
like hearts and minds living
diffidently ‘with eyes closed’.

Tiredness streams in the
supermarket’s eyes, all of this
heaviness on shelves
shrinkwrap cackling.

There are dry leaves everywhere
bursting in the doors
over the white floor
perpetual death and life intertwined
like insect swarms, webs, cords.

The weights of money and goods
topple against our hide, our putty
skins, our plastic dresses, over our gritty
eyes, the smoke in our torsos
abdomens, our breasts all sexual desires
melting around our knees
packages of frozen meat, spiderlike
movements over our buttocks, tattoos
on our ankles in the shape of wings
but faded, distended.

We should be laughing instead
of wandering like evaporated luck
or a plot of cash points
a graph of bewilderments on price tags
sliding doors into the great cavern of the centre
full of gems, gowns, movie tricks.

And exit signs stretch out like
a system, a straight-seeming system
that is soon a dead-end, a locked door
in the shape of wings but faded.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

TEXT TOWN traversals i-iv

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Christopher Brown

i.

A new regime and daily now we count each step –

so much for the flaneur who won’t have seen the

street sweepers voided glass attentions to detail

the stairs doused stools upturned a-nights three

parts smashed heard hours since in cool/scenic

first name basis coffeeshops count the stairs or

court the path and bless it folderol for the ages

the australian financial review waterproofed

at the foot of the rivering drive vigil posting

pet losses push on and rest upstream enact

the data see the poems whose concentrated

lists accumulate and mark modernity as my

name comes gloatingly up if steps are numb

ered distraction is too numerous to count


ii

A delicate shot

out of the dunes

left you about ten
seconds to dive into the frame…

more than a bit of beach-worship out here

Shining the badge to esteem in a sequence mapping East –
a glass box at the blue limit

We’re still pissing
in our wetsuits …

the red and yellow breeze falling
back to our cream brick eldorado

rare

cloud-grey
chalking pastel fibro

up the road –

that possessed
and breathless pitch
hammer raised
to dust

pure de-cluttering

not-for-long

moving house where

brighter folk leave priceless art on the confused
space of a footpath

This all two trains and
a sweaty trek from the

stripped and paintless

western face of a weatherboard in December

I own I live
in the sprawl

and notational spree
and might be anywhere

unconvinced

listening in to

the americanisms
that go unnoticed

I own I grew up here

bought in

stayed and got out

Same pledge to postcode
inked in over the knuckles

art that’s mainly tracings

All the things you might have
been minus your inheritance

Saturday

bought country road at the red x for a comp
arative song

anyway

like to see it?


Age of incredulity

Beneath the vicenarian chipboard façade charity at the door that
gives nothing boots up silver stairs the flagged duck-walk to nip
libel in the bud. sanded roads and blank semaphores and i wait
as you in a minor gridlock of mutual irresolution. most alarms
are overlooked but where a die-hard pious few out along the
weeded island spare the time (or cash) to pray for me for us –
was it e’er more timely…they mumble or remind me move
ment’s blind as i pass the bank the toy shop and tabac the
sullen punters learning their place in the vip lounge. here
a mild swipe at sworn rivals pleads you rethink your plan
to happiness. leap and clap your feet if clued in. now we
cross the road for an aversion to hi vis. graffiti like civic
pride. i go home only via the above. but home too tells
curious tales…your institution or mine. how is it on an
average day sun shining the benign seems indictable…
how should the ordinary account for my incredulity.


iv.

No idling promenade

i.

Now those shameful alerts or a broad audience for a
novel definition of alcoholism graces the promenade

where we stop and curate a casual shot and share it
emblematically waves behind and in a smitten idyll

even the police have had time for a beach drive-by
well might we referee ourselves strays are off the

chain still it’s no idling pastime paying guests sag
under shouts and military duress then the sand –

ii.

Could you go and draw a more severe line in it?
brekky on the beach through a slessorian lens

and men at their leisure flip the menu to the
shared pea or weed salad the cucina povera

which only matches an austere architecture
bathing in clinical light mini dudes on trikes

cruise on ahead prams importune at tears
and stop curate the shot…share it capitally

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

The Incredible Disappearing Man

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Rebecca Slater

Come and see the incredible disappearing man:
once king of shoulder flips in neighbour’s pools,
backyard slayer of middle stumps and myna birds,
man of many dog disciples, leashless leader,
stick collector, dashboard drummer of travelling
highway shows, pancake flipper, tyre pumper,
lord of lowtide skimming stones,
speedos sporter, weeding warrior,
watch him: standing in the yard,
hand to hose, hose to sun,
the thin blue stream
evaporating before
your very
eyes.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Johnno and the Seagulls

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Andy Kissane

is not the name of a boy band, though it could be,
I think, and then how it’s so easy to lay the blame
at the feet of others. But if you hold the brush,
then you’re responsible for how the painting looks.
As surely as the artist makes the art, people
make the mess they call their lives. I am
no Goddess, but I have to remind myself that
what I have with Johnno I created, though it took
more than six days and six nights of labour
and I don’t remember resting on the seventh.

When Johnno unwraps the white parcel of fish
and chips on the grassy ledge at Brighton-Le-Sands,
I want to throw it all to the seagulls and let them
squabble and bicker right down to the very
last chip. They prowl around our feet, these
shameless salt and vinegar scavengers.

I rejoiced when I floated through the early
months of coupledom, but now I’m stranded
in this limbo of Friday night picnics, Saturdays
pashing at the movies, Sundays given over
to a trek up some bloody mountain track
while the flies circle, my t-shirt sticks to my back
and my calves threaten unprecedented strike action.
It’s as if I’ve nailed up my volition in some tea chest
and left it in storage while it waits for my ship
to find the harbour. Botany Bay is calm, serene,
the wind fresh, the sun slipping out of sight
with this euphoric belly flop into the early evening.

How did I manage this—a thinking, independent
woman who can’t say what’s on her mind
because her man is going away to the war? And
that’s assuming I know what I want to say.
Now that he’s leaving he seems more attractive
somehow, this modern hunter gatherer
who might not have caught the fish
with his own hands, but thought enough of me
to pack a plastic goblet, corkscrew and a bottle
of plonk—this crisp, fruity moselle that goes
straight to my head, the lights shimmering
in the dark water like a hallelujah chorus.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Father’s Phobia

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Alene Terzian

In Beirut one night, Father hit a woman
driving home past curfew
from a soccer game. We hear the story
from Abu George, his childhood friend,
because Father can’t ever admit to his mistakes.

45 years later, he still refuses to drive,
claims poor eyesight and an unhealed rib
make him dangerous. We play along
because the erratic rain of Sunni missiles
may have propelled our car into her too.

We never ask about the haunting; it sits
between us like a broken bridge, a wet road
on a starless night. We don’t ask why
he didn’t stop to help her, why he revved
the engine, raced his way home.

We don’t wonder if he remembers
the color of her hair, the thick braid
sweeping across her left shoulder. We create
her likeness in our minds—sometimes she’s not
a Muslim, not a farmer’s wife, not a beggar.

Sometimes she’s just a girl who gets up
and walks away.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Double Acrostic

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Stuart Barnes 
‘Leg magic!’ I’d chant, swinging higher behind the badminton centre, flaunting Mum’s
earrings and Razzamatazz—nylon whoosh—and my barely hairy legs, ever-unat
-tended tenant of that gravelly South Hobart park where purple plums also burst philo
-sophically; Sophocles chronicled doom in the teens—smilelessly, I’d push mow the lawn,
The Cure’s Disintegration spuming, cumuli
apprehensive of Dad’s appalling
kernels of corn. Pre-hipster Balaclava the promised land until Alexander came out with
‘encephalopathy’—rapid detox from sex, Fox Mulder’s ultimates, poppy seed hament
-ashen. Cut to West Brunswick—uni share house dazed by The Annual, acid, Chianti,
red geraniums in terracotta pots lifted from neighbours’ porches; the perenn
-ial ‘Youse lazy skips
don’t belong ere!’/‘Raver freaks!’/‘Tofu
eatin queers!’ while tripping to the tram/op-shop/supermarket. SUPERB
APARTMENT, Easey St, Collingwood! Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Juju
needled the mind, Tina the scalp, tweaker after bloody tweaker
dealt in gobbledygoo at The Peel, hundred buck return cab
rides to Sunshine for Xanax blowouts, nothing but Nescafé and chapati
until payday. Every Clifton Hill jasmine the Hydra,
nasturtium a gory
wide-brimmed helmet as fluoxetine, nicotine, caffeine kneeled before zero.
In Cooee Bay I ran with curlews at new moon, shrieked ‘Adieu!’
to my fear of the night, searing it with full vocalic
horror, snorkled with bales of green sea
turtles, honed ‘T’estimo molt’ for a dreamy partisan in
-habiting Catalunya. On The Range the tipsy rainbow lorikeet
eases its brush-tongue from African tuliptree to African tuliptree, next door’s handsomish
dad’s gentle with the son who turns remote-control cars over with the sort of freedom I
ordered and doesn’t snarl, into a hairbrush, I only wanted something else to do but hang around, a cud
-gelling: … same-sex couples … (mark one box only) … ‘Ja! Oui! Ae!’



Note: ‘Double Acrostic’ includes several phrases from Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Suburbia’

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

This Pigeon is a Big Man

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Troy Wong

My therapist wants to know if i was breastfed
I have a short attention span and get bored easily

My Mum yells abuse at me as i’m leaving
for work One morning i move out and live

in Granville I cover my balcony with plastic grass
Two pigeons make their nest there green

& purple like oil on wet asphalt I have
a short attention span She lays two eggs

behind the milk crates I hold them in my palm like
coins I put them back South Street on Sundays

is a tunnel of chicken smoke Road rules are optional
Cars smash like eggshells His red eyes are goji berries

He puffs himself up with popcorn & cigarettes
When i stand up too fast he vanishes in a puff

of smoke They gather twigs & shit everywhere
they stay Because it is a Safe Place i live in

Granville and my barber is probably a drug front
So is that juice place no one ever goes to

At night the stray cats snarl & rip at each other
Making love sounds a lot like a catfight

I have a short attention span but some things
i remember all the time like I’m two years old

on the kitchen counter at my parents’ house
and my Mum says You know your Daddy & i

love you very much I’m twenty-three now and
there’s so much i don’t know I try to say Love

and say Loud instead try to say Mum say Mad
instead try to say Mum say Mouth instead and it

swallows me whole Family comes out Felony
Safe comes out Scathe Dad comes out Dead

This pigeon is a Big Man My Dad is more pigeon
than man Mum raises her voice and he vanishes

in a puff of smoke drives a white van around Sydney
gridlock like an egg stuffed between milk crates

She gathers coins for her empty nest I grow
old and walk around with fists full of twigs

& broken eggshells I slot my hands in
my pockets like coins I don’t know what to do

with them I have four parents Three of them
are pigeons Two are roosting on my balcony

One is a stray cat At night i lock my doors &
windows Some things i can block out but others

i remember all the time like My first word
was Car not Mum or Dad

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Suburbia: Jurong East

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Alvin Pang

Decentred centre. Regional hubnobbed, notquite heartland,
more ribcaged iron lung of the body politc; working protein;
a thigh muscle: hardly missioncritical, although would be missed.
Or else re-placed.  Swath of brownsites, postswamped, timestubbed,
grassrooted and faraway from tua por: no bigshored rickshawed
downtown comehitherness here. No one to impress, this corner of
the 21st C, so everything smallcapped, missmelt, mixmetaphoric, free
of storyboarded skylines or selfieready shopfronts. No toilets
glazed with ads above the urinals advertising legacy watches&
and holidays by the seine. Still, michelinguided porridge purveyors
and famous fromelsewhere meepok claimants stall here,
not for brochure rights but rent and proximity to locyal tastebuddies
who brave the PIE for lunch, sleeves rolled and merces parked by the town
council next to the atm queue next to durian tout next to mobile repair&
next to pawnporn creditready lenders, remitters, resellers, headbowed
men and women loaded with fairprice bags. More tuition centres than toy stores.
Beautiful, necessary employment embanking drenched and empty playgrounds.
Dollars to be stretched and places to stretch them in. Home is where hope’s
affordable.  Afternoons, coffeeshop voidsprawls enchair worktanned uncles
in checkered polos haranguing policy (safely offsite) over sips of kopi-c-siu-dai.
Ashfall soft on plastic tables. A son in dhaka squealing from a scarred phone screen.
The chickenrice auntie brisker and louder than presidents (having raised teens
and conquered cancer while hubby shagged shenzhen divorcees,
or so the tv soaps may script her), insisting on cheer and more chilli sauce.
Each chaw sharper than a good story, with no end in mind and no less love.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Parkway

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Daryl Lim Wei Jie

Down here, my pound of flesh is worth a dollar fifty
more. Where the old pretzel maker from Mindanao
once rested his sweat-flecked arms, there is now
a fire sale of obsolescence. A garden of aerosol cans
glistens, a low-grade hum emanates across
autonomous regions of retail. We once saw Mrs Lee,
very much the hypotenuse
to the railing of ageing steel. Every half-hour the virgins
parade, and giggle in their off-white whites. As I ascended, I recoiled
from the gathering stench of marriage. Remind me to tell you
about the other sale as well, before the discount codes go bad.
The nomads tell us of emporia built into emporia, aporia
within aporia. Some legumes here have not yet felt
the heat of the sun. Subprime loans bloom in neat terraces,
their scent draws the weary, the homeless, the recently discharged.
Noodles from Sarawak, a newly discovered scent
from downtown LA, a tribal mask from London. The best bed linen
wage slavery can buy. Wordlessness bleeds, out there
there is silence curated just for you and your loved ones.
Get back to work. There are acres of sleep we have not yet lost
and visions of paradise still not in the catalogue.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Listening to U2 with the fat still on your lip—

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Lawdenmarc Decamora

that pale patience of yours, oh, I could drive myself
crazy from this observation of condominiums to Maine,
old and bony Maine. What’s that song you’re guessing?
I guess it’s empty passion no groovier than last night’s
cigs you’ve beautifully lighted for one more china sparks
at the counter of 7-Eleven. You know what happens
to fat when fingers stay out of love, out of their silvered
stillness? Traffic lights, they turn to the eyes of the law
in tripartite colours. It’s safe and subtle, isn’t it?
How clever the fat moves in princely prose, or
in scripted smoke splitting between your Kerouac
lungs. I suppose you’re a movie star, a gorgeous
hard rain, a motorcycle of flowering acquaintances.

The kitchen sink never dirtied, you never cooked,
peeled, dreamt. But you showed me your world.
Ashtrayed the day away. That dear fat on your lip,
I loved it and I wrestled with the night pretending
it’s already 2:30 AM; that no creature of the streets
would dare say it’s another Bono song you’re slanging.
Whether Where The Streets Have No Name or Stay
is slippered on your ears, the test of music is the gape
of a new fish at midnight. Every time I finger-spelled
the words of your breath’s lyrics, you’d say there’s no
perfect word, only car park symphonies
and the heavy pulse of the runaways.

And so I learn
the basics of yesterday, smelling
the fat on your lip, its music and magic astound me—
forever guessing the beat of our endless
smoking suburbia.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

The Closet Opens by Degrees

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Jini Maxwell

This is the year I make reparations
to my sixteen-year-old self.

I am closing every Messenger window,
burning her school kilt, and letting
the wool smoke choke everyone.

I am retreading sixteen like a warpath:
I demand to be kissed unremarkable
while we wait for the bus;
unroll me on your tongue
like fruit paper,

fuck me in every summer
we tried to avoid;

during grace at family dinner;
your stepmum’s house,
when your dad is home;

the old playground,
right there on the tanbark—

and then we’ll climb the bars
and do butcher flips,

and you could teach me
how to be here in ways
I never figured out on my own

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Burial

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Kate Middleton

for Neddy

Furious bright day
on which the calendar
notation reminds
of jackhammers at dawn,
the digging of a hole
to be filled at dusk:

pool of clear sky
unsympathetic to such
endeavour, the careful
mapping of dogged grief
onto earth—
fault lines expanded

by heat. Hours
warped by shifting
ground, our wait
to undo the cryonics
of final injection.
The veterinarian’s

receptionist reads back
dimensions, white
old blind eyes stay
frosted until the rite
lurches ahead, body
thaws into hothouse

embrace of sweat, dirt
and the various
wisdoms: remembrance,
fidelity, the give of
suburban landscaping
and fumbling prayer.

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