There’ll Always Be Music

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Gareth Jenkins

On our first date she gets fired for selling me half price drinks.
She throws the beer in her boss’ face and walks.

‘How am I going to pay my rent?
I don’t care anyway he’s lucky I didn’t knife him.’

I remember the knife shining on the counter
the one she used to slice lemons for vodka.

I look out the window at all that London going by.
I’m scared of her and utterly in love.

A year later I visit her in Denmark.
We sit in the piano room overlooking Ward Z.

‘There’ll always be music,’ she tells me
‘Leonard Cohen’
whom she’s translating into Danish
with the writer’s group she’s formed in the asylum.

A single note from her finger against a key.
The grounds are filled with empty aviaries.
The ocean sweeps in towards a black pebbled beach.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Where Fassbinder Hangs His Albatross

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Julie Maclean

Considering Martha (1974), Maria Braun (1979), Lili Marleen (1981), Veronika, Lola, Petra and all.


summary
she posts secrets to an address in another hemisphere fräulein
pins secrets all over her lumberjack shirt
she covers her nakedness with secrets
stuffs secrets into holes her mother made in her bedroom door with a stiletto heel
in a quest to beat her for her lies and lipstick liebe
she longs for her first love, sometimes her third
she injects weed killer and brake fluid into them
she drives into the river and drowns the children kinder
she serves poisoned meatballs to him and him
she loves men jungen yum
she’s filled her lover’s car with water using the garden hose
smiled and beaten a dog ein kleiner hund
she’s murdered her best friend and stuffed her in the wardrobe

subtitles
I don’t know what it is
I have thrown a kitten against a wall and watched it dribble and limp I have
trapped a cat and wear its head as a hat its tail streams down my back
I have stopped eating I can’t stop eating
I stand alone on my bridge of sighs meaows
I want them ALL to die I lie and lie and lie

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

“like a kid eats cake”

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ray Liversidge

for him every month is you know like cruel
like it is now in april with the sun beating
down on his face in jack kerouac alley &
later when theres like you know no sun theres
city lights & its like wow look at the lights
man & then its like another alley another lane
another whatever (but thats like what he likes
coz its not cool @ home you know) & then
from the second level of vesuvio i see his t-shirt
I EAT PUSSY LIKE A KID EATS CAKE
& i think thats like not cool man &
how mallarmé you know wanted like
removed from the lexicon & as i point
my iphone @ you a voice behind me says
hey you know that aint cool dude & hes
you know more than like right you know

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Wuthering

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Tanya Grae

I am another man’s wife—
a fact that eats me
in small bites, zoned out
as the microwave seconds
count down. I think of him
when my husband feels
the need, wrecks me
where I’ve tucked yourself
in [a contortionist’s feat]
to stare at the assault—
how a lie devours daylight
& years. How long past no
does the hole implode?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Lung Rubble

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Molly Conway

I.

angling for a booth we settle for the bar. the bartender hovers in front of us. its date night. he locks eyes with her. can i buy you a drink? she squeezes my hand. i hold onto it. sure, if she gets one too. we laugh into $18 cocktails and get drunk on our invisibility. i push peanut shells in circles not knowing if I’m more embarrassed that he didn’t try to pick me up too, or angry at another entitled straight man.

before all this. i was only three years deep in learning how to keep my queer girl alive. learning how to move. bodies. cities. continents. i tried walking. 900 kilometres across spain before i was ready to breathe at home.


the first time, i ask to kiss her. we are in her sister’s bed. a copy of The Prophet is next to the bedside table light – hard plastic, shaped like rock. i read to her from the section about building houses. the amber walls glow a long night.

in the winter we drive across the country. in a town of desert, a bar of men stare at us as we enter. bodies and volume rise. they boom over us even before they know. we move the car to a ridge twenty kilometres away because it is safer to sleep on the edge of the earth than it is to be near those men and their eyes.

before all this. she asks to come in. it takes her months, but she does. limb by limb. she finds shelter in my peel, pull and thicken. after all the boys and their unwanted hands she finds me cocoon
enough.


II.

it’s me who finally suggests the break. she continues combing lice out of my hair in the bath. let’s just try it. for a few months. if we keep going with this open thing we’re gonna crash and burn anyway. she nods heavy and shows me a nit. we eat scrambled eggs at 12am and wear shower caps to bed. the thought that this could be the last time pulses desperately between our thighs. the shower caps don’t stay on.

after all this. four months and we havent seen each other once. the flow of customers eases again. i reopen tinder. scroll distracted. edit my profile and give up. its easier to hang onto the girl who doesnt want me than to swipe into the bodies that do.


i believe the break is a break. i dont hear her sealing up all the windows and walls. she bricks. i shout. she emails

                              powerhouse woman in you, thank you for opening my world
                              so much wider
eyes                              since being apart ive realised
big.                              even though
jump.                              attracted to women
around.                              if you had to plot me on the spectrum
no.                              i am more attracted to men.
                                                                                          edge.

i run myself a bath and wrack drool thrash. she will apologise for this erasing. but for now i am dripping

               she can’t mean that.            straight world mean that.
                 one and a half years can’t mean that.
               spectrum mean that. spectrum means picking the edge you’re closer to
                     falling off.

               you spend too long away from your queer girl
                     breath and then wonder why you’re clawing
                              at air. cant figure it out, can you?

                                                                 you too-much-not-enough queer girl.

too much. talking trans kids at your niece’s birth. hiding armpit hair in your grandma’s kitchen. “do you have to turn everything into a gender thing?”


not enough. straight-passing babyface femme. blushing while you pay for that strap-on, wearing the hoops your mama gave you for your birthday.

               i confuse queer
               for crumble
                              for bloat
               surface crackle
                              electricity
               dissolve
                              short circuit

rash creeping over opaque mouth
my lungs, crooked trees burning a hot
                  how?
                              it doesnt matter. she left you to ember this down
                              alone. straight-edge be knife-ready each time.
                              this gonna shrink you, huh?

puff puff, nah. its time to slick myself.
               out-sun the billow
                              and pulse that deading away

III.

she agrees to see me.

“are you still in love with me?” she asks, with the confidence of someone speaking from the other side. a boy on a skateboard catches up to a girl on roller blades. they lock hands and glide parallel, past us. i unthroat the electricity in my teeth. “i don’t feel nothing.”

i tell her about the fire dream i keep having: us stacking love hot, then her walking into the dark. when i realise she’s not coming back, all i can do is wait for it to ember down. she squeezes my arm in a that’s-poignant-kinda-way and we keep walking. i feel resentment give way to warmth. on elwood beach a dog arches its back and takes a shit.

she asks about my life now. I list the momentums. “im excited for you.” she looks at me with eyes grounded, already nostalgic. I am still a salt tangle trying to melt into her.

i dont tell her about mornings. how i surface, remember & unhatch dissolving. how i get up anyway. how coffee tries its best to churn a smile. how she is still on speed dial.

instead, we hold hands and walk back to st kilda. i stare at the kids staring at us. let them think we are girlfriend & girlfriend. it’s not a lie, just fucked up chronology.

she drives off. and all i can think about is eating a burger from that vegetarian place down the street. and how my body is humming. it pours. it pours on the drive home. i put the kettle on. spring the back door open and smell jasmine. my birthday. i take my washing off the line, head inside.

Posted in BLOG ARCHIVES |

Swift Venom

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Christine Burrows

clues blurred in the rush
the gush of work
selective myopia

you sent cryptic texts
left palm prints on the mirror
a whiff of wrong

hope’s bright palette
out-coloured everything
the red clot, dread spot

couldn’t stop my daytrips
to a future with bunny rugs
big eyes & first steps

but you were hiding in
the ultrasound machine
coiled in the corner

of the grey screen
then – WHAM!
your taipan fang strike!

the venom was swift
in my defeated blood
you slithered away slowly.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

signature

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Dusk Dundler

working out a week later that all he wanted me
to do was leave all he wanted to do was
make me leave. sneaker meth authority.
bad dancing. lanky white cap rat face.
wanted to spit too. make people move.
whoever does not want to move. me
32 hrs after acid drop. ain’t moving. cost is
appearance but not interested in either. mental
block for back away. initial fear from smokers
balcony of undercover cop accusal comes back
to haunt. badge number to whatever pig hate i yell.
but still ask badge number. continued drinking second night
blind exuberance, intention of this place is a shouldered venom.
after everything i say, must still edge away
so slow plus stall backwards cause don’t want to get spat
on like i just saw rat face and mate do to someone a minute before.
above stairs get gently pushed in doors. favourite day
club insanity. nothing to do with me. did i say
something. chalky castor street malevolence. Westie
screech. was havin so much fun. Na just couldn’t stop well
lost. back dancing. no use in leaving. till he arrives and hauls
me up on dancefloor. hardly hear his expressive bewilderment
of job still to do. staring inevitable outcome. mucus covers return of
blankness like translucent mask. like the sunglasses i am missing, like this long
unimagined intention. pick beanie up from stand in front of speakers and very slowly
wipe it off. he screams you have to leave. no need for reply just as long as he doesn’t
touch me. and he does not want to fight.
sadness of extremity. joyous loss.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Hidden Talents.

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Kerri Shying

sat cold-arsed
at the bus stop
waiting on my job
I see what passes by

shorts with t shirts render men
fatter taller primary school boys
lipless sadness ground
into the skin

just women work here
no assessing trend

I

count up
nose-pickers shine on footsore
dads who proffer up a
juice box no mate see

I wear the short skirt you

chat me hard you
get me off this
cold hard ground

I

say
to my busmate

hey that looks like Plait Lady
and the pedophile

doesn’t that take you back

he did his time

we nod but in our side-eyes no
no no we don’t.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

21 Ideal Dates

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Tahlia Chloe

Ideal date: we do yoga and never touch. After years we turn into separate trees full of regret.

Ideal date: you convince me not to do drugs and I let you touch my hair when no one is around. We never mention it because it is a secret.

Ideal date: in different beds in different parts of the city we are both watching our phones, willing each other’s voices into existence.

Ideal date: we have been friends for nearly 5 years. We name all the different places we dream of going. We meet other people and take them instead.

Ideal date: you call me to let me know you’re seeing someone new. I know it makes you happy so I don’t ask any questions. I lie down.

Ideal date: I want to ask if I can kiss you but I just can’t tell. We wait one thousand years before ever speaking again.

Ideal date: I am a small bird cupped in your hands. You are also a small bird so there isn’t an unfair power dynamic.

Ideal date: we Skype, say things like ‘I never want to let go of your hand’ and kiss the webcam. We imagine our pixel selves as happier than us.

Ideal date: you forgive me after all these years.

Ideal date: you are across the road from me and we make eye contact. I am able to control my breathing.

Ideal date: you tell me about meromictic lakes and melting glaciers. I am nervous and say that you would make a pretty glacier.

Ideal date: I saw someone run over a cat earlier today but I think I’m okay.

Ideal date: for once I am not sitting in the rain trying to convince myself that I am not disappointed. The phone rings when I ask it to.

Ideal date: 12 years on and you are ready to apologise. When we meet up you get distracted by birds. We enjoy being soft around one another.

Ideal date: I say sorry and you don’t say anything. I say sorry again and you let me say it as many times as I like. You know it is important to me. I say sorry for the rest of our lives.

Ideal date: we go to couples therapy and I find out all your childhood traumas.

Ideal date: I am yelling “you are so hard to love” at a wall because it is easier than confronting you. Later, we meet up for Thai food.

Ideal date: you never punched me.

Ideal date: we are one of those middle age couples who feel comfortable publicly smacking each other on the bum at the pub.

Ideal date: for once, what we say aligns perfectly with what we mean.

Ideal date: it is finally the apocalypse we always dreamed of.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

confession 2

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Stu Hatton

it was Wed night in a tryst & what was my nom
de scène? I was either getting ahead of or
tailgating myself, you were dressed in skin
I would be your cowl cowling at all hrs to make
sure. And all I said was, ‘You know we could’ve
collaged the ghost we needed out of merde &
feathers but some Man’s going to tell us what
we can. He’ll say hell he’ll be our major backer
can you believe but to hell, let’s brush
the glass dust from our heels let’s enter the
hatchway let’s lose our page again so well.’

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

I am in love with a tall, tall man

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Holly Hunter

A man so tall people whisper behind their Americanos knows more about the meaning of life than we ever could. He was born this height and he will die two centimetres shorter. He buys his clothes sized to fit. He imports ensembles from overseas in two styles: casual and formal. Casual is a polo shirt and light woollen trousers; formal is like the suit that stretches when you skimp on a dry cleaner and hang it wrong. When the tall, tall man’s clothes arrive by post, he folds them in an old-timey satchel cum briefcase and walks direct to the tailor, whose business the tall man keeps afloat. The tall, tall man talks of local matters, of which he is well informed, while the tailor darts about the man’s legs, unpicking hems and magicking inches into the already comical pants. The man is so tall he barely notes the pressure of the tailor’s fingertips or the measuring tape around his ankles. He cannot see any of this, of course. He is too far away. To have a tailor in one’s address book is a matter of life to a tall, tall man.

Now look at him in the café, bending to use the eftpos. In the queue, a millennial’s rolled-up jeans and bare ankles mock the tall man, and everyone is watching. As he types in his PIN to purchase a hunk of loaf with a smear of butter, the tall, tall man is thinking of his cousin arriving from Australia that afternoon, and for whom he must remember to make up a cot.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

The Possible Dream (Buying Jeans Online)

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Melinda Bufton

I don’t know. Does Eileen Myles think this much
about her jeans?
Probably not.
Creating the perfect poetry jeans is not as hard
as you think.
It requires patience, skill,
habitat and armoury.
How to be Parisian seems to be really
How to be Patti Smith, with hair serum.
Step 1: have small breasts.
But collarbones
Step 2 take a tonic out of your bar fridge
and replace all the Evian with spite. It’s chilled, therefore.
Not bitter.
‘She buys very expensive shoes but never polishes them.’
Cool. I’m in.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Confessional

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Anthony Lawrence

In a country town, the doors and poor boxes
of churches left unlocked, I would steal away
in cricketing heat. The Baker sisters –
veiled spinsters in black, were gardening
like keepers of bees and secrets.
Inside the church the sun was a stain of light.
In the sacristy, pewter cups, unwashed linen
and caged ash in thuribles were enough
to make you believe that spiritus mundi
was under house arrest. In the nave
I’d experiment with kneeling. In the chancel
I’d invent biblical names and watch
over proceedings, my tongue an organ stop
my hands casting wide nets of prayer.
Sometimes a door would open and I’d see
a long shadow hesitate before
heavy timber closed like the audible
stages of relief. I’d keep the confessional
for last, as trespass has a ranking scale.
I confessed to crimes imagined and real.
It did me no good, but I loved the vision
I had conjured on the other side –
a priest in cowl and scapular, leaning in
to say Tell me, and tell me straight, have you
and will you again? his mouth betrayed
by a quiver.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Recovery Ode

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Christopher Brown

Talk of the night before –
the moment of mirroring
impasse in the corridor
then abandonment the

Broken thread and wait
It’s news of a two-day
technical misadventure
lifts the spirits
then you ringing me
could I think outside

Months
you place me on a
liquid diet light duties
increment permitting
an official “Visitor”
perhaps a friend

It isn’t mandatory
but in the sequel
I wait and watch
while you

(Common droid your
pretense to humanity
like fame stardom means
only to assimilate)

scatter back to earth
and where’s desire”
what of strategy
a t-shirted subterfuge
inviting revealing
just the letters “…AMO…”

where i wonder what you
mean but can no longer
read and we’re leaving

Now my minders say
(though I’d stay)
and we should do
this more often.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

homologeo

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Marty Hiatt

otherwise we degenerates just bumble about.

big holes still in my mouth.

i also felt like there were just more weirdos getting around

i cried multiple times

i was so nervous i was almost falling over and could feel my voice shaking and also sort of jagging abruptly

it was exhausting and exhilarating and emotionally extremely overwhelming

we were jetlagged or drunk or extremely tired or extremely nervous the entire time

, saying daft things…

it was exciting to smell them

, even tho i remember i was pretty miserable at the time.

, during which time everythings changed.

i was still woozy and we all drank quite a bit.

im interested in everything

, so its going to be a bit of a situation.

its rushing along faster than we can keep up with,

, which has been a big relief on multiple levels,

there was this kind of perfect storm situation developed in the days following

i guess im just in an open for experimenting phase with everything. (of which more below.)

tho mayb im gonna get a stress ulcer soon. because of my news.

oh im so slow i just realised everything! wow, crazy, awesome

yeah, that light just jizzes our little phone cameras.

its really gentle and mild even if still kind of wild

and also quite gentle things to your mood.

im sort of spacking out but also feeling awesome.

i feel this desire to give you more and better in this letter,

, more like a blurt update.

this made everyone feel pretty damn weird.

, risk of everything amounting to nothing, being mere waste product,

but the chaos told me to.

it made the whole thing feel really weird,

im so excited about so much but then when i try to tell ppl im like

, i had my teeth out and then took drugs.

lots of awkward socialising, which slowly became less awkward.

pretty much the whole time i was either jetlagged, or drunk, or extremely underslept.

time goes by and you just realise how miracle ppl are,

and obvs ppl there are so much more external and open,

i told myself i just had to be willing to say wild shit,

but i still have big gaping holes in my gums

everything feels very disrupted. its really exciting, but extremely draining.

i got a full chart thingy off the internet then two different friends read it for me.

today was astrology day, by chance.

, but the adrenaline i guess carried me through.

i was on a high for a while after. we went out dancing twice actually

, which was really a beautiful thing to do.

, swam briefly in the pacific, which i was super glad for,

do you know her drawings?

its been pretty exciting.

just blurting my bleph.

but mainly avoiding everything…

im a bit of a wreck.

i still love you all.

how youre in a live situation, not a scripted one, etc.

, it woke me right up, i want more,

, its been driving me completely nuts,

, really obsessive about things, impatient, flat and pent at once,

, which is actually a new feeling for me,

so that had me laying low for a while.

lazy as opposed to what. the convulsions themselves.

, but with much more distance now.

i wasnt very into it to start with,

whats the point writing if i manage to buy some veggies and cook and sleep and wake and eat and talk with lovely ppl and aimlessly emote……

i felt so overwhelmed with love for all of us there.

im going fairly zany over here, late spring zane

, or just turned outward, quite clearly

and i was super tired after three days and nights of mania and booze,

, buzzing with anticipation (im a fan).

otherwise ive been struggling to read actually. i feel far from everything.

, but things here have been gangbusters intense for a while now. its hard to explain

it feels like a bit of a floaty whirlwind life here.

the sun was going down for ages.

, and then the next week was just insanely exhausting, like extreme, dizzingly extreme, anguishing and joyful and playful and just strung out

i wanted to sleep with everyone.

no worries if not can explore other cosmic possibilities.

, we certainly cant hold the movement back.

i really like you and i like being able to like you

i have an old blog.

, or at least i was muntedly reading it this way and going loony with it.

, while otherwise being very depressed and indifferent to everything.

, and in that state you really shouldnt expect to do anything other than try to not be in that state.

mayb im just projecting everything, but im going mad.

(not to take the wind out of the sails of your going mad)

just rest yesters. painkillers and ice.

and then lazed in the park and talked for ages, about the night before, about queerness and sex and problems and hopes.

i was crying multiple times

and otherwise i feel like weve just been cruising a lot around here.

so much cuddling and back-patting.

, which spread out into a fantastic few nights and days.

sekt, nail polish, black metal, chemicals,

so yeah, no more feeling like im alone and mad,

we all got tanked and went wonky and talked braille barefoot in the dust.

, after a lovely night in the park drinking,

my bro was there too. a lot of our friends painted their faces as dogs

, it was interesting and exciting coz everyone kind of put on their best face as it were.

it was totally heady, mixing with amazing beautiful weird people, so much reflection and info

faces light up for you, to you. enormous presence.

everything seems fine but i also feel really weak.

, but im not really judging myself at the moment, just rolling.

i love everyone, i sit around staring at everyone loving them, enemies of death, nuggets of anti-death even as we are all dying, with their own unique specs

the crosshairs settle by moments on all the players, in rotation. but it is really already too late

, im glad even tho it has been a crazy weird tough time.

, which took a lot out of me, and, well, im still in it,

i was crying multiple times

most of us went quite silly, at least some of us did

, roamed the streets, danced in a tiny little tower

, rather than just holding on for dear life. and you do a shit-tonne of emotional processing,

and i felt overwhelmed with love for my chum every time

i was on the dance floor totally in love with the music,

, risk of everything amounting to nothing, being mere waste product,

grinning from ear to ear and dancing like a total nong

and saying ow when i accidentally hurt myself.

, coz i was super anxious. i dont like losing body parts, no matter how small.

at one point i cd just hear smashing glass but not see anything,

but our session went off pretty well i think.

so great i was howling/whooping after.

was super sensitive to colours, a particular palette (cyan, fuchsia, violet) for days afterward,

also totally lost sense of time at points,

sort of present but provisional, mayb inevitable

, yet still fucking fucking wild.

(we were all supposed to be saving ourselves for the next night)

and how this is always going to go on and on as well

lots of mouth rinsing

, and buzzing and buzzing and just going at it. and then boozing like mad afterward…

and blood clots and crashing out and sitting around in dead time,

, not reading that much po,

im not all that interested in theory and po at the mo

, just going on silly quests instead

(like being mildly electrocuted)

, rather than just fucking around a bit before getting a job in banking

and still feel a bit mediated by externality or something, which might take the pressure down, and it really came out of nowhere,

, rose to the surface

, it got really overwhelming,

this is a totally new and ludicrous life config setup for me!

are you still flipping out?

yeah that is really intense.

its not that surprising if youre a bit bombed. youve been maxxing for quite a while now no?

funny to just sit around, vaguely working, in the lounge room.

i love living in other ppls rooms.

we should all just circulate.

i love to sleep, but i super love being awake! and hyperventilating.

im kind of crying.

i was turnt turnt turnt turnt turnt turnt

and basically almost had an ulcer from the stress and intensity of everything since then!

then a week later i ended up on a spontaneous binge with some other friends.

i didnt mean to sound annoyed before, i wasnt,

im in a capital mood.

yeah im in a pretty good mood since

i felt good, then bad, then just weird and annoyed.

i think im going ok

and, well, everyones broken,

the city is intense and im feeling nutty

ive mostly been feeling hysterical, as well as feminine and sensual and open and colourful

you all have such great avatars

and i send you lots of love and hugs and well-wishing hope shit is going well there stay marvelous and tough

and yes, pls dont go crazy!

thing is i dont currently have a permanent home,

, at least not for this degenerate reader.

sort of feel like sick in my own skin.

my mind is really getting bent out of shape, getting really wriggly and tinny and wobble-boardy.

mostly unable to compute.

even tho there are fractions of it that are mind-blowing…

and then i just collapse into a crying pile of dirty washing.

one of the positive side-affects!

(, said the drugs.)

the city is super beau at the mo, and, well, so are all our ppl here.

i also saw a tiger-in-a-späti video the other day did you see it before your dream?

i get freaked out by futility.

(like what we chatted about the other night)

i was really really flipping out but now im a little calmer. like trying to function while in shock

its a disaster but everythingll be fine?

sekt wells in my gum holes

all the rest of us were all madly hugging.

and the rest of us just standing there killing ourselves laughing.

and it was fucking nuts.

we band went late to the park where we had strange arguments, got whack stoned all who touched the joint, and some went on the giant neon ride for to upside down and be ill.

i felt like time had become like a water-trampoline force-field floating-pulsing back and forth before and through me

, couldnt finish a sentence.

so intense with like 30-something nutters there all bumbling and thrumming…

(you cant see whats happening only ten ppl away)

i was really manic and great, have also been telling myself to calm down, chill out,

and walked around all night just relaxing and chatting and it was super-dooper.

im a bit of a wreck too, emotionally and all.

everything is actually also totally great!

but it is more the super-exhausting emotional aspect of it for me.

i think im turning into a girl.

as we were all merrily saying goodnight, everyone hugging.

and walked and chatted till long past dawn. it was amazing and awesome, really intense but also really gentle and mild and open,

, but it was almost more fun walking around for hours afterward, just chatting and feeling nice.

im always up for a chat about old po fogeys, polyamory, anxiety, confusion, time, etc.

now im just like wanting warm sensual affection from all and sundry, boys and girls, girl-boys and boy-girls.

, after thered been this intensity building between us for days,

i cracked under the pressure after feeling some sharp gutting stomach acheys,

was buzz-sobbing in the street after the storm (the storm!) outside the vietnamese joint waiting for my take-away while they blasted hideous super happy bop-trance from the kitchen

a lot happened, it was intense. i guess it was a bit of a growing…

, we stayed till long after close and we told off the men who came to tell us off.

we are all drunk on each other, light-headed, stumbling, but also racing, talking too much, bounding along unbounded boundless…

since then ive been in a kind of crisis situation of attractions!

but this meant i got to see the crane man climbing up his tower crane and switching it on and spinning it around and around in the dawn sun.

it was certainly an abrupt extraction

the sun was coming up for ages

, the shifting significance of time (retreating, approaching)

the shifting extravagance of time

what are we doing. goddamn.

i wasnt very into it to start with,

i should prob go fry me some eggs.

ill get you a pic.

happy lunacy

always a pleasure

life here still feels pretty open and weird,

ill show you in the flesh soon.

thanks for the carrot pie

cd you pls tell me what time i was born?

might send you this draft poem ive been working on for the last few days

dont worry im not normally like this im never like this

just felt like making contact with you

its been a super intense time

on the shoulder of weightlessness

things here have been fairly wild here since you left.

otherwise things are just plodding along here.

i hope youre having a good stint in the zany mountains!

happy crazy week at work

we should skype soon.

turns out a bit of bone came off during the procedure. luckily no brain attached.

the other day i read about a benign brain cyst you have?

im out wednesday night and thursday night and saturday and sunday nights.

but im prob home for the next few days recovering…

i guess you just try to get through it and make sure you dont mumble!

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Revival

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Danny Gentile

He sits at the fulcrum of a critique.
He sits as an italic, an index, a concern.

There is no bone to be picked at, so
he gives it one. There is no hate to be
delivered, he attends now with a pen.

The slight weight has shifted its tolerance
sideways. Was that what you projected?
Is that the bitter cadence you have rung?

Give me an apple-skin to shine through
every vector of my home. Bring me the
cast-iron plate. Bring me combustion.

From the sedentary workroom no axis
tilts from its custom, nor its plane, for
the bench lies idle with the undecided,

the unlikely, the uncontained. Prayers
come like breathing from a chair. An
adage ripens. When dust is next un-

settled you shall hear the hum, the
ineffable note rising. The song rises to
rise again, from unrestricted evidence

of timbre and tone. From the critical/
uncritical adage that set it going. It is
neither broken nor un—. It is reviving.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

your new diet

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Oscar Schwartz

i met you just after you started a new diet
every day you would eat only that which was related to a food memory
sometimes you would tell me the story behind your diet for the day
for example there was the day you ate a box of freddo frogs
and you told me that it was a reminder of the time you stole a box of
freddo frogs from the school cafeteria
and ate them one by one on the school bus home
other times it was easy for me to guess the memory
for example there was the time i came home and the apartment looked
like a 10 year old’s birthday and we ate rainbow cake for dinner
you also ate things that you didn’t distinctly remember
but that your parents told you they had fed you
like sweet potato mash or fish boiled in milk
i learnt a lot about your childhood by watching you eat
lots of pasta, mangoes, almonds, not much meat
we also went to quite a few average suburban restaurants
many of them had changed cuisine or ownership since you were a child
but we’d eat there anyway, which made no sense to me
mostly the new diet was healthy and conservative
but on the days when your memories
led you back to what you had once desired
the eating could become extreme and manic
there were times when you became secretive about your memories
like the day you cut up the pillow cases
into tiny pieces and swallowed them
when i asked what memory you had of eating pillow cases you replied
what do you care? this new diet is doing wonders
i look and i feel fantastic i bounce right out of bed

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Save

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Sam Riviere

With Astrid there is this sensation of invisibility. After a couple of days in her room I feel an agreeable fuzziness developing around my skull, as if my identity is actually becoming unfocused, so it’s a surprise to encounter the distinct lines of my face in the bathroom mirror. For the first time in my life, I remain largely insusceptible to the temptations of jealousy, which would involve the assertion of my ego to a prominence I don’t feel, currently, it merits. I am anyway familiar with its special contortion: hating those who precede me, meaning I must hate her (or at least her judgement) for allowing them close, meaning I must hate myself for occupying the same category. This logic asks me to be the exception to everything, when I find I want to absorb those names, to become larger than them, to incorporate them all, impressionistically, in her memory. To be interchangeable like this seems fine, and in her bed, luxuriously blurred, I finally feel able to author an anonymity that is believable.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

methane dress

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

remedy advance
omniscient pavement

sickly uniform
exchange headstone

thump cyclone
adulterate unit

fleetingly diagnostic
especially fracking

whenever ancestor
buck room

secrete muscle
generation stains

distance basket
bouncing courtesy

proxy hernia
rainbow cursor

faux radio
welt crash

warring fractions
upholstery elite

special synthesis
favorite contempt

classic stranger
sorting award

plastic hallway
troubled fume

smoking typology
album drone

conclusive cards
laughing privilege

unexpressive net
crushing filaments

window justice
handheld sigh

irrelevant hazard
uninterrupted sleeve

indelicate pool
enjambed vista

vintage prong
non-normative feeling

stuck in impossible buildings

dizzy elegance
in a binary diagram

the bedsheet wind
is deafening

imaginary portraits in
sedated reflection

brittle flags for
vinegary excuses

pulse friendly a
buffed environment

scripted bodies
boycott levers

oversized facial
for bandaged perfume

casual stooges
lift up slime

sentimental abandonment
of polite zeroes

platform veneer
wears methane dress

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Making Instant Noodles at the End of the Rainbow

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Norman Erikson Pasaribu

Written by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated by Tiffany Tsao


Wake up. It’s four a.m. Your cellphone alarm goes off.
It’s for Christy—her morning Quiet Time. Turn off the alarm

and make the bed. This is usually Christy’s job.
Go to the kitchen and get out two packs of instant noodles. This

is usually your job. Boil water in two small saucepans. Prepare
the seasoning, then the chili powder. Christy hated spicy food

and you were just the opposite. Put the two blocks of noodles in one saucepan,
the soup seasoning in the other. Christy couldn’t stand starchy broth

so you humored her. We can afford the gas, she’d say. Drain
the noodles in the colander. Divide them between two Hello Kitty bowls.

Christy bought them ‘cause they were cute. Christy said she wanted to be buried cute—
in pink ribbons, foundation, a little powder, blush, mascara, and a frilly dress.

Take both bowls into the bedroom. Enjoy them
alone. Christy’s gone. They found her body

under a bridge. Before it happened, Christy said she missed her mom’s sayur lodeh.
You don’t. You miss Christy. She came to you in a dream the other day and said:

there is nothing at the end of the rainbow

it isn’t even a painting—

just a trick of the light.

Christy—who once told you I am pounding on
heaven’s door. Who knows, it might open—forgot

we are all droplets of water
we will fall to the ground but not yet.

(And love is the Light!
And Love is the light!)

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged ,

By Christmas

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Cyril Wong

I’d like to be gone by Christmas.
Not due to sadness (nothing
so trivial, even as she waves to me
across time) but because I’m done.
Or because I’ve no more
agenda, nobody left to impress,
nothing to do that somebody
else cannot do, regardless
of what the sitcoms tell me.
Not that life is no longer
hilarious, but such a space
is opening around my tears
and laughter that I’m no longer
certain if I’m myself or the sky.
So bring it on, dear body
(don’t expect me to do the work):
the casual aneurysm,
pneumonia or multiplication
of cells – what difference
does it make when change
is never new? Not even
that I’ve stopped caring –
but if my tea leaves inform me
I’m through, I’d nod at the news.
Hell is other people: oh boo-
bloody-hoo. But more likely
that I’ll awake next year
beside you; I’d wash the toilet,
teach, read or write
a poem about us again too.
Just in case, let me say goodbye
before it’s all over; for in spite
of what anybody says,
I’ll always love you.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Illiterature

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Toby Fitch
I’ll start this off without any words, watching them pass like clouds in the sky, too busy sucking. On warm milk and laxatives I’ll walk you through heartbreak, show you the out-takes—all the dead wood from jungles and cities on fire.

Someone talked me into it—“Entertain us!”—odour on their bodies, even though we hadn’t had sex for a week. I was shaved, tied to an easy-chair in a room with a window in the corner. I found truth horny, but that’s okay, my will is in holes and dis-used shafts.

She kept the sound of broken homes pumping—a live transmission straight to my heart. Every wet nurse refused to feed me in the fire of daddy’s little radio girl, the lady I felt maternal love for. We talked in the heat with a hint of anaesthesia in our mouths—“We can plant a house” / “we can build a tree”—bipolar opposites attract, I guess, but you were right to walk away in silence; the animals I’ve trapped have all become my pets.

When I was an alien—sickening pessimist, conservative communist, apocalyptic hypocrite, master bastard—lights shined like a neon show. Negatively creeping, emotionally scapegoating, I learned to cry on demand—my eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun. She should have been a son, not an eclipse living in the Ice Age. A duel of personalities, she would’ve had a fine time living at the Sunday swap meet in the over-bored night.

Thank you dear God for putting me on this stupid and contagious Earth. And fuck me, man, this is a waste of time, passing through wastelands once more. Look, an oversized rock! All of a sudden my water broke, scattering flowers washed down by the rain. I really wet your bed.

Oh, so this is permanence, the past now part of my future comfort in being sad.

I don’t know why I’d rather be dead than cool, systematically degraded, neutered and spayed. I feel very privileged, in debt to the centre of the city where all roads meet, weather changes mood, routine bites hard; where electrolytes smell like semen, meat-eating orchids forgive no one, unknown martyrs die; where love will tear the lights out.

You’re less dangerous turned away on your side, hanging out on clouds and moving through the silence without motion.

As the king of illiterature I’m very ape, alone here in this colonised afterbirth of a nation. Avenues lined with trees, strangled words—they take turns in cutting me up, nail me to a train. With eyes so dilated I’ve become their pupil.

This is why events unnerve me—the flowers sing in D minor in strange new rooms, maybe drowning.

There are countless formulas for pressing flowers washed up on beaches, struggling for air—do the twist by the gate at the foot of the garden, lie in the soil and fertilize mushrooms, listen to the silence and let it ring, erect a city of stars—but I lose the feeling.

I’ve got a new complaint: dreams always end and I’ve another down payment on very bad posture (I’m metallic blue turned red from rust). Oh, and the soft pretentious mountains glisten in the light of the trees. I’ve gotta find some therapy; been locked inside your heart-shaped nights filled with bloodsport. My own parasite, I’m not afraid anymore to distill the life that’s inside of me.


(after Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis)

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

I’m Worried That My Increasingly Complex Shower Masturbation Routine is Unethical Because of The Amount of Water I Use

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Adam Ford

I use thirst as a guide to how much to drink.
You absorb more toxins breathing in a hot shower
than you do by drinking tap water all day.

Evening seems fine.
Nothing else has changed.
I’m good now.

The needs of detainees are complex.
From bedroom to bedroom an
increased amount of graffiti.

I’m worried that this is all because I
can’t make the break from what I know.

I’m having trouble at work with judgements
of my ability and trustworthiness
or being assertive enough to say
this isn’t where I choose to go.

I’m wary about people visiting.

I try to avoid thinking about the
permeable membrane between
TV and the internet.

When you blame the problems
on porn, you’re telling yourself,
“Porn has me in a headlock.”

Complex pieces of assistive technology include
complex computerised communication devices.

Positive relationships don’t just happen.

I’m blessed because my Dad and Mum are
alive to help each other along the way.
I fill in the blanks, but that’s
how we get things done.

I agree it would be better for boys
to make their own decisions later.

Personally, I don’t care
if you do cartwheels
naked in the shower
so long as you aren’t
impeding my routine.

I wouldn’t mind being naked next to a guy
in a shower or sauna or whatever because
I’m comfortable with my body.

Using Rhesus monkeys with artificial hearts
I turned traditional presumptions about
sex and marriage on their head.

So that’s why I’m going in again.

Can I find love if I’m depressed?
I’m in my 40s and people my age don’t
compare to the 23-year-old I married.

I long got tired of all this mess.
I don’t want to be part of this.

I have so much more confidence.
I’m really happy with my results.

My life has meaning because I’m still
here and all the possibilities I have.

I’m increasingly aware that
my time is being well spent.

I advance my privacy settings.
I get involved. I develop.
I spread. I give feedback.

A substance appears coloured
because it absorbs light.

I’m probably not much different than most people.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

G’dayology

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Michael Farrell

Or this – I have an autistic child, and
when she repeats the whole Catholic Mass
at lunch the medical team call it echo-
lalia. Dock their lunch says Bruce, say
hello to reverse red tape prejudice
The trees won’t chop themselves down
unless you show them patiently, by

analogy. We had to gaol your combine
harvester say the police, it was doing
something wrong. It was Sunday, but
luckily I have an arm so I could chisel
my way in to the yard. Wrote a speech for
Stump Sunday: it was not complimentary
to your Christmas lights or the way you

arrange the white bread in your summer

pudding. Someone’s captain’s visor
slips out of the op-shop. Ghosts don’t
vote or they’d scare the Liberal Party
My voice was caught in a wombat burrow
by the time the night was over. Coral’s
gutless that’s its problem. Practically by
definition, a predator’s unseen till too late

Bruce is an asset: no matter how much
nothing there is to do, he’s always done
the least. He was in no rush for a handbag
made from a native bird. The young bull
fell in love with his father in the mirror and
his mother in his sister, it’s classic husbandry
In the paranoid waiting room, the weather’s

a major distraction, the TV appears to think

Speech patterns flatten this route, raise
the other. The gate indicates all kinds of
inclusions, performing none. The re-
ligious fallback itself begins to fall. I
have an autistic lyrebird and it covers
its head when we go to bed. The kids
were braver than those raised on abstract

mammals. Up a ridge and down a gullet
No, I won a bag of coal, and won’t let it be
burned, that’ll show the desert. I wanted to
show my upset sister how family war’s an
antidote to the world. She took the glocken-
spiel out of my hand and sang a G’day that
cracked the water tower, raked the hay, shaded

the sun and set the snake and mongoose free

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged