The Last Time

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Eva Birch

i.

I feel like me and Nic might still have sex
I used to think
Why?
I
Why?
I…
That little girl
It goes
Ran down the grassy hill
Eluded by it, a snake
A furthering bike stand
It did appeal
Watch.
What.
That love that was

Narcissistic Personality Disorder,
It’s when they treat you like an object
But isn’t that the history of humanity?

Be careful of those who call you weird
Their trauma they have not met
Yet
So sure of speaking rapidly
They go on
Depressed depressed depressed
Shhhhhhh!
So sure of a blue tomorrow
Green green green green

What?
Watch.

All the dumb sluts need to step back
Onto the mossy ledge of the old pool
Empty now
Maybe dead
How does one care or not whether another one dies?

Wait a sec,
Back to that strong bit:
It’s ok.
Because I actually…

Don’t worry
I can say that
Don’t worry
I can hold this space
I’m ready now
After all this time

Who’s doing this? And who is doing that?

Wait.

Keeping up with
Keeping up with all the different types of abuse in Melbourne

My brain runs out
I can’t remember anything
Except
Every email and every text every ex sent

Why did they want to take NPD out of the DSM?
Why did I go to meet you after you wrote that you feel like you are not capable of non-exploitative love?

Why does one, a little one like me, write?
It is because I do not want to exist.
After what happened

What?
What.

The little devils run ’round
And I meet God
Here
Now

In the end times, we all declared what we were truly thinking
As of a true drowning
Giving thanks to each glacier as it melted at a speed which we could not see
Yet our hearts felt
It

ii.

Take me back to 2003 before i had not not had a boyfriend

He used to surf at sunset
My boyfriend
I would lie out on a board experiencing the peace with him

When we walked I held on to him
I was always holding on to him
He said like a limpet
You know those shells that if you’re strong like a guy
Or maybe my mum
You can kick off the rocks
Or use another rock or something
Otherwise they stick

I couldn’t get them off
I can’t kick it
I’m trying to kick it
I promise I’ve finally kicked it

Even in the city
We’d play footy and then watch the Simpsons after dinner
Comfort
Clean sheets
His mum had that Martin Luther King quote about being scared of shining too bright
On the fridge
I think about it often

He used to surf at sunset
My boyfriend
I would lie out on a board experiencing the peace with him
The peace he could not express to me from
Behind his guy face
His guyness

How does it feel to stand on two legs with a penis in-between and feel at peace with the world?
Tanned skin making you look more white
But not thinking about that
Just being in the water
Or when you get in the bath
This is the only time you feel at peace

You
Me
You:
When I was little
I lay on a rug
Next to the jasmine
Next to the veggie garden
My mum was making pizza
Right nearby
Sun, sunlight, warmth
Each brick
Put down
For the house
I felt so good, just happy, rolling around
I wasn’t hungry or anything
There were kookaburras around
Lots of space
But I was safe, just near the kitchen
Where my mum could see
Like a cute animal baby
It felt good to be me
But.
When me and mum went to pick up my cat
She didn’t let me name it

This was before
Before I hated women
Before climate change
And before I started to feel as though i couldn’t make it as an adult

Sometimes I suck the salt off my finger
And think of the insufficient funds

I think of all the problems in the world
Most of all I feel my dick
Always there for me

Me
Him

He used to surf at sunset
My boyfriend
I would lie out on a board experiencing the peace with him
The peace he could not express to me
From behind his guy face
His guyness

iii.

Fix it fix it fix it
Biscuit

Exit

The brevity of your scope
Stop and feel yourself

Your soul is broken.

Boy
Erstwhile in this finicky lost ward
The World

BOY: the first one was probably fucked up

I met my first fuckboy
At the hospital
With mum
When I was born

Nah nah nah

No, though
The soul be it broken
Can be here

In this car
You.
Me.

Being with you was like being in a small dark room
By myself
As we broke up
the leaves and the light were coming for me

The world
I was breaking into it

Me.
I.
Filled with good energy, I cry

Walking in the park

Lying in my room
The cellulite on my thighs is trauma
It’s moving around now

And I’m back
But it’s me, really
As I put my fingers between my legs
And then smell them
Don’t worry I’m still in my body

Wait.
Wait.

Taken together

Here
Now

I’ll write both things over and over again
I’ll say the same thing over and over again
I’ll say the same thing over and over again

Watch.
What.

I love you, she said after the panel
I’d die for you, she said down the beach
Why can’t I truly understand those words?

Anymore.

Truly
True love.

Too long dying for a guy
My brain froze

How long?

The American boy was my first crush

America
Forever
Take me back

Please take me back to your nothingness
My own abundance is unbearable

The scope infinite
Yes

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yellow love

Into the light!

Babe

It’s me, really
I love you Eva.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

resc(you) dog

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ann-Marie Blanchard
finding words for brothers is like trying to light the stove with scapulas. you chucked my kid body full of watermelon—me, (toy)dog. but i wasn’t a toy anything. feminism must necessarily kick & bite because boys (some boys) girls can’t stop. i grow into a woman who remembers my elbow (&) glass, my forehead (&) glass, my ribs (&) glass. you’re rich now, fill your rich man home with four legged structures to crack poverty against. why are you so poor, sister? there are no sorries; it’s my fault for being a delinquent teen, breaking a family (already broken), selling our acid-flecks: love-hearts not red, we—a family of five—love green. you hit girl who consumes horse-tranquiliser, girl who turns limbs into non-limbs. it’s better for girl to inhabit broken bodies. dismantled, family feeds her to the dog who paces the house’s borders—will be dead by tuesday—tangled, tumble- dried, thrashed by eighteen coal-truck wheels. twist of tibia, snout, scissor, sifle, croup, atlas, wither, pad, hock, stop
.
Posted in 78: CONFESSION |

Lamps

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Jackson
I tend to lean my death forward instead of supporting my fate in alignment spine pegs and gravity working together as they should. Late carding this torch: went for a court, did some ghost checks on various messes and brains, came back and had a cloud. Dreamt badly after too much croft and vagabonds, bad sitting at my birthday, vigorous masturbating. The better the orgasm the less careful I am of my drag. But it bleeds okay now. Just a little stiff. The bigness is low; if anything it’s in the chug dumps, not the clag dumps. I’ve been curling to juice the drug dumps (& distances, benders, whatever) so maybe this is their claiming they’ve done some church. I can peg much further forward in seated forward robes now. Trace’s intermediate plaster rating away the dreams. Afraid of talking over, afraid of curving myself. Not afraid of raids, as such, but of lamps. Unable to run from a predator.
Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Being Astrid Lorange

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Kathryn Hummel

Green my vacant room for a minor player
of the harpsicord. Can’t help my heritage,
stout and beer-drinking: calves thick with
muscle, tending to heels. Pedigree
weak but soul willing (so far so wrong).
University, yes, and such an adherence
to the literal. Several excellent books;
frightened of self onstage; cut off hair
to spite nose. Still, you like these old forms,
fading records covered with white film
like a cold chocolate bar so you see
how they scratch when you spin them.
Here beats the heart of a working class
half aspiring to a pretension it is too afraid
to mock. Where are you now, Beveridge? Bolton?
Oh there, in the audience, adoring—I couldn’t
see you for the followspot. Daddy dearest,
I’m round like a kitten and my kitten teeth too.
So soft, my white jumper like any boy’s beard.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Unfinished Objects

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Stephanie Christie

You stole this pronoun.
I need to have a shower
loosen my side of this tension.

D is solving.
promistaken
mind [x] changes

Nothing has happened.
I hold my mouth shut
with one thumb.
His sounds scatter a
long way

Today, hearing Classic Hits, I realised what’s going on in
the lyrics to “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. I had to step out
of my place in line and hide in an aisle with the diaries.
We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks.

C raving doubled-over vision
rash
rush
C

We believe in thoughts,
see[k] our own nucleus in them. text
mess me
up

The cabbage tree wants
to reach towards the sun
not reach it. Nothing
has happened

Your fingers, quick and thin
look like my fingers
wrapping and unwrapping
on the table between us.
You zip your coat up
and down, at the windpipe.
When I sit, you do
leaning in.

A house divided against itself can’t stand.
making fool s unst
able pulling self togethere
to bits myselves all our best inten
se

The first time I rode a bike was on a field that was empty
except for a metal pole way on the far side. My dad let go
and I flew over the grass. I kept my eyes on the pole. All
I had to do was keep away from the pole. Just keep away.
The pole got closer, bigger and bigger, I couldn’t stop

It’s worse than smoking. You smear the city
with signs, a figure reflected in windows,
voice on the bus.

Narrowed to one lane
with all these slips
headlights glow wet gold
& the storm washes the road clean.
away

Nothing’s happened. You make me feel
less alone. You’re also real.
That might ruin everything.
The story folds and unfolds.
We’re only animals, you said.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

another agenda

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Adam Lau

we had other agenda but
i listened to you explain
(for about two hours)
why you recently broke up
and how you much rather enjoy being
thoroughly yourself

i very much wished
we didn’t have other agenda
because i could sit with you
(for about two hours)
and not need to move
my restless body

so when we were almost kissing
i was more excited
by your eyes, now bare of
spectacles, that reached
far beyond pleasures
and inside my insides

sex with you is not enough

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Prelude

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Philip Hammial

Like Snow White in a heat of kink
I’ve lost my most. Glad
handles my mouth. Closed
in a cellar situation, I’ve never had
the satisfaction of cereal. When
I’ve done a pray I walk away. If
they so wished they could drang me
but haven’t yet. If you’ve done your homework
you know that an axe in kind has half a mind
to. And possibly fro but that depends. It’s one
(that one) beyond mistake. So much so that
Shame sends Horn home. Can you recall the issue
of the noise of the skirt he wore? A forced entry
(it says so here) is a commodity that sits ‘twixt betrothal
& the next guy. With him we’ll never know
if it’s dogs or crows. Or a five collar job
in Flute City. Therapeutically loyal,
we’re trading blows. Each numbered
as arousal, with eunuchs in attendance. What
in pink cups they bring us to quaff is the same
as that stuff in black cups. Or so we’re told. Me? –
collared & caned with no safe word I’d urge
some spill. As all mess eventually must
in this is there too much of us?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Logo

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Šime Knežević

I am a simple gesture to repeat, a flow. I am a phrase
I never know when to say, for example, “la grapefruit.”
I am a slideshow, I remember thanks, have a nice day,
and that’s a good song, and I need some focus, honey!
My bio insists infinite sleep is my best self and
my best horizon. In a world of shadows lapping,
nowhere to go and minimal technical support,
my dreams are, for some, on terror watch-lists.
Death is a cartoon in my head. If I were near
an aquatic centre, I’d float on ‘the surface of things.’
It’s time to raise the stakes: I thought I was a knife.
I want to swim forward across the day like a shark.

*

“Self portrait” 1
“Self portrait” 2
“Self portrait” 3

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Govinda’s

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Carin Smeaton

u better not read from yr notebook naina says else he’ll know we sent u then she sends me to find out his prices across the road the place next door to govindas where the hare krishnas is standin outside lookin gloomy she noticed cos jay’s stealin their customers away & dem hare krishnas is nearly always smilin everyday but not today not like jay naina says he won the lotto & he already set up 2 shopz next door and that was 2 years ago & she dont like his way of the business his cock in a goldmine fresh bread n icecream and now this other one exactly like hers but wit the cheap specials open til 2 & who’d wanna stay open til 2 in the morning? who’d wanna work til then? she says there was a cafe there before wit high (how can it not be blessed) saintly ceilings cheerin on the chariots like how ya do from dem heights so arvind has to be extra nice down here to customers smiling more than ever true from da teeth like how he does in his photo wit da beauty priyanka chopra the time she visited their restaurant the time she was makin her movie (naina says it’s beyond her daily dignity to work for tv serials) so arvind is chirpier i mean he has to be and even when customers might interrupt his account-makin league-watchin serial-smoochin business he dont scowl no more makin him a new man goin the extra mile in a fragile livelihood & i get paid in masala chai and rainbow baafi it tessellates rays n shades all over the pitt street intersection makin a bridge to jay the angel of sneaky student specials and as i cross i catch a lost friend in instant regret and lost sleep on her way to govinda’s but all i can do is not forget what naina tells me how much is your pani puri? how much is your pav bhaji? how much is your sev puri?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Hush

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Michele Seminara

You’re bloated and there is
fear in your gaze.
You’ve demanded the right
to be this way and I
have acquiesced.

Mirtazapine bought no peace.

Food wrappers, razor blades, beer bottles, bong.
Your body is an energy pushing
pain into a form which it commands
the world to witness —

I witness you.

I look into your eyes and whisper
— with my eyes — I see you.

Bitch, you shoot, from the dark side of your mouth,
your head in chaotic orbit.

I’m whatever you need me to be, baby.
Let’s croon the moon to sleep like we used to.
Hush.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Backchannel Norms

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Justin Wolfers

She’s simply not
interested in the
correlation between
my mental health &
a good dose of
Keeping Up with
the Kardashians;
nor the poetry of
Sam Riviere; nor
the ballsports of
many a variety

Justin, a linguist would say,
violates backchannel norms.
He withholds those subtle signs—
mmm-hmm, right, yeah—quick
head-nods—that indicate an
engaged listener, & encourage
the speaker to continue.
He makes eye contact
like a person who has been
told that eye contact is very,
very important

Kafka once wrote,
I tell her, I solve
problems by letting
them devour me.
Yeah, she replies,
but I don’t think
he meant that
as advice

He lives in a hotel now. His monkey
was recently confiscated in Germany

One way to solve
these problems,
she tells me,
is to not write
this poem at all.
I say, Stop making
this about you

He takes Adderall to help him
concentrate, because his sleep
is too restless to make endorphins.
But he hopes to cut it out soon,
and replace it with something more
natural – he’s flying to New York
tomorrow to see the specialist

I’m sorry, I
tell her later,
sorrier than
I can say
in such a
tiny chat box

Today is Justin’s first day off
Adderall. He has the arcade
closed so he can shoot hoops
with the journalist who’s inter-
viewing him for GQ; he has the
cineplex closed so he can
take you to the movies

I’m working
on a poem,
I tell her, that
destabilises
contemporary
verse – but
not much.
I mean, it’s not
doing anything
interesting
with the line,
meter, or voice;
it ignores the
entire history
of the lyric as
well as Charles
Bernstein; it’s
not conceptual,
or if it is does
not realise; it’s
neither intimate
nor alienating
enough, it’s
not concerned
with troubling
that binary,
only itself;
it’s exceedingly
long and boring;
but not quite
elating in it
terribleness.
It simulates
the feeling of
disappointment
without delivering

He plays the journalist a new song
he is working on called ‘Insecurities’;
he asks her if she likes it. She does.
The hook, Oh, oh… oh, oh…
fix all of your insecurities –
rattles round in her head for days

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Daylong

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Adam Stokell

Not even a day without!
It isn’t good,
now black poems pile in every gland.

It isn’t all bad.

This morning I leapt clean from the blocks,
pushing up into lulled woodland.
Low fog was with me like a tailwind.
Even the marsupials seemed groggy,
letting me metres closer than usual
before the bolt.
Losing sight
of shore quickly through drenched bracken whelming
taller than thought; occasional gumshed
clearings to catch breath in, lowlit
with heath, banksias, quadruped acacias,
all busy uploading winter blooms.
Lungs gasped like landed fish.
My calves burnt. But I was busy
beating out a way, a non-way,
fumbling its breadcrumbs childishly back
to half known tracks – but not quickly.
Untold hours away from myself
were gold.

Lagging back to the shack
still brimming with animal fatigue,
I forgot to take lunch seriously –
scoffed! – letting blinkered
thoughts get a zealot look in.

But a scarlet robin bobbed up
just in time to enthral me:
insatiable bird narcissism
craves every drop of crimson, every jet
black pixel the car’s side mirrors
kept dishing up – and then some;
the pull looked worse than heroin.

Then when you consider the sugar-fix
sought daylong by a needling
eastern spinebill … (But you
wouldn’t. What sober person would?)

Everyone was carrying but me.
And hadn’t I already lasted long enough?
And what cost continuing this see-saw without?

A precious deafness had dissolved
with the morning fog; the pistons
more than audible now, insistent
as the blanks always there between stanzas
spent leaving myself and landing on things.

And then the phone rang and I forgot
that to answer a phone is to look at a clock;
and to look at a clock was to know,
mid-June, if I didn’t leave soon
I’d miss my dealer’s daily window.

The addicted mind is a mob:
Chinese whispers at compound interest
gain sociopathic sway. For me,
the forum always screams loudest around 1600.

Who was I,
already one foot out the door,
to deny them more?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

On Not Giving an Account of Oneself

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ann Vickery

for Dann & bindlestiff cyberpunk

I am telling a story without prehistory.
Pocket rockets of pink, the go to temple
of gum blossom. Rays of morning sun
settling on the driver’s side. By way of warning,
I would say I am impressionable.
My inability to assume greater agency
offset by being ‘on board’
with the attention economy. Pieces of intelligence
fall as spring rain, once more unadvertised.
Breathing in damp grass simply
the work of motor neurones. Be still,
be mine, my Dixie flatline.
Road trip vs the more anti-natural commute:
is this shorthand outworn for the human path?
Paddocks disguise a different kind of sprawl, post
the muteness of winter. A Euclidean delisting.
Might I take a wrong turn
at the object of temptation? Mud-spatter
on the high chrome gloss. The tattoo of razor girl
making out with the console cowboy
just visible through the rearview mirror.
If I took a peptide for every disappointment,
would I fail to replicate Love’s focalisation?
The foreign object unlodged, made mobile
in my basic needs bloodstream. How to drive
beyond an escape clause of origins,
of having started out all wrong, a problem
to be ‘found’ somewhere, hand in glove,
with my infantile life. Outsider bespoke:
That was then, this is now.
Listening to bird song. Again.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Prelude

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Philip Hammial

Like Snow White in a heat of kink
I’ve lost my most. Glad
handles my mouth. Closed
in a cellar situation, I’ve never had
the satisfaction of cereal. When
I’ve done a pray I walk away. If
they so wished they could drang me
but haven’t yet. If you’ve done your homework
you know that an axe in kind has half a mind
to. And possibly fro but that depends. It’s one
(that one) beyond mistake. So much so that
Shame sends Horn home. Can you recall the issue
of the noise of the skirt he wore? A forced entry
(it says so here) is a commodity that sits ‘twixt betrothal
& the next guy. With him we’ll never know
if it’s dogs or crows. Or a five collar job
in Flute City. Therapeutically loyal,
we’re trading blows. Each numbered
as arousal, with eunuchs in attendance. What
in pink cups they bring us to quaff is the same
as that stuff in black cups. Or so we’re told. Me? –
collared & caned with no safe word I’d urge
some spill. As all mess eventually must
in this is there too much of us?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Clodhopping

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ali Jane Smith

Cut a hole through the ceiling, the insulating batts, tin sheets.
Climb out that way, spacetime jelly-wobbles.

I might revisit the demolished pub, say something else at the rock pool
decline the offer of a garden tour, take my plate out to eat with the others

give water to the thirsty bird, walk past the walk-in wardrobe
never think about the toaster oven or even the kitchenette

decline the second cup of coffee. On the sidetable a box of tissues.
A dry eye, I got lost on the way out, matt corridors

a house in a dream, a trustworthy figure directing me to exit
the warped, exuberant magazines, the yellow daisies with tawny centres

the prohibition, the fat black bear, the fact I’m here
the flattened ear, the greek key patterning the curtains

ice cream container full of leftover barbecued steaks.
The aluminium ladder in the aboveground pool

sinking slowly on one side. I was wearing a bouclé
v-neck jumper, mustard yellow, and I didn’t feel like talking.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Clouds

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Connor Weightman

when we broke i tried to write a poem
commemorating the occasion. i wanted to say
our time was worth remembering, but
rushing forward i braised it in salty voiced sea metaphors
, you, it, me, us , the horrifying bruise of
the colonial history of rottnest (as if it had something
to tell specifically us), world war two utility fighter planes
& yr kinda racist father.

i entered it in a local poem contest
judged by scott-patrick mitchell
. it didn’t even make the commends.

i couldn’t see: we shared in-jokes that would not function
in poems, for example pronouncing the word clouds
like the name klaus, exaggerating the soft end
. i didn’t foresee: three years to follow where we’d lose
all contact, where clouds would still enter suddenly

a ghost / a long-lost letter / a setback / a lapse
/ an impulse / a triggered nerve / synapse / a re-run
of a dumb sitcom

that we’d watched and rewatched
nine or ten seasons of
, dampening down the busy brain space like

stuff / fairy floss / cotton wool / dodgy insulation
schemes / fluffy covers / high thread count / clouds

until parted, framed that one long night where grasping
the significance, i couldn’t stop myself from crying
or doing
what i’d started: being unable to face you or us
, stuck between two bad futures.
i couldn’t have: pencilled in the repetitions, the days
i’d wonder who would break this stretching silence
first until you deleted f.b. or maybe
deleted me & time passed & keeps
passing until wednesday i see
you in the street, do nothing but wave
while you smile big & keep walking
& it isn’t that i’d want you back, or that
i’d do it all again, or that
i can still see laid out
the minute machinery
of how we ever worked
in the first place
, it’s just

soaked loose ends, obscured
& dangling, trigger some things
& i’ve nothing to tell them.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

The Bees

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Chris Armstrong

Do not scroll past this bit
this post is the clincher
you know that girl and I
celebrating 5 years of friendship
this is the place where together
we save the bees. I don’t know why
the bees are endangered, which ones?
So I share the bees, paste it
to my status and that is as good
as building an apiary of anger
in the cracks between the keys
where drones write how pissed off
they are, being forced into this
when technically they invented the hive.

No matter
the likes, the emoticons
will save bees and me and friendship.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

anyone w a treble clef tattoo is bad news

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Harry Reid

when did melbourne get so northcote
in the backyard a greyhound
rolls itself despite
m intentions –

for a while i thought it best
just let it all wash over m like
a half-drunk lifeguard

then i hear gareth tellin m thats
shit & hes right

of course

“u gotta see things a little more history
more poetry or smthng”

when did i get so handsome?
sex in th morning so european
i keep m socks on what a don juan

if yr juanna i guess that makes m
john johnson or mayb keats
“killd off w 1 critique”

u sexy little debrief
in th breathy suburbs i love
a sunburnt neckline

th australian dream realised
a tennis ball on a string in m garage

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

The Pardoner

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Stuart Barnes

with thanks to Dustin Brookshire


On the wall a small plate
of sunshine altered position
bit by bit. He’d’ve had me pick from Gothic headstones.
While he washed I turned the deco doorknob with
military precision. Briefs, wallet, keys.

Though on ice, To the One Who Raped
Me is prostrate with hope. My own mind
is my own church. In the sack
I’m no longer an African cat.
Night terrors give way to dreams.

The fever’s gone
(Zelitrex a Zeppelin,
ring-shouts at subtropical altitude),
the long weekends (smashed
on Yellow Birds,

Horse’s Necks, Elephant Gimlets,
the vapours of
fags/cowboy killers/cigarettes,
Tina’s champagne paws—
enough

to crystallise hair).
I’ve eaten
my fill of sleazy smiles,
colour
handkerchiefs rippling

denim pockets, matchsticks
thrilling skin. Entirely
guilty of subversion
I’ve murmured ‘He loves me, he
loves me lots’ while quilting Grindr’s fakery.

I’ve dreamed of amnesia.
I’ve dreamed of Major Nelson. Here,
I’ve dreamed of seven hours’ revenge, criminal
of zero variety—
a kelson of the creation hooked

into him, into him, into him.
Such sweet thunder—
Amazonian queen, I ration
Brookshire’s chapbook. Away
with the houselights. Douse impossibility.

Candles laugh in the face of the dark.
Post-burial, what’ll I eat,
will I starve. The wattle spills globose light
over Ariel—Ariel, Ariel, Ari, he
who drugged and raped and pardoned me.


Note: a terminal from Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Jailor’, with phrases from Paine’s Age of Reason, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

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 |