a collection of words
Anne Waldman typed
into the Poetry Project New Year Marathon
livestream chat
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frequency
ditto activity de-
mon John thank you “dreamer
as artist shaper
knower” Lewis!
“moving through Air”
mow [sic!]…. learning to type
all over again
through tears
someone responds oh Anne I can
only imagine &
Brian Blanchfield says Lew-is Warsh
= stimulus check
J speaks in the last hour
and tells the internet &
Anne Waldman I hope about
the time we walked
down Flatbush Ave and
I was mad in the rain
no trains no
buses just walking and he
called it glass on the ground
and he said I yelled
and I guess I did not like this
morning when I didn’t say
anything until
three o’clock
and spent a long time rearranging
the magnetic poetry
on the refrigerator
I am watching All the Vermeers
in New York and eating
scrambled eggs
like I might pretend
it was all a deliberate act a decision
to push onwards to a topography
less familiar than
this poem
another poem
another
another poem small structures
that
stood
on the page
until yours flickered
and danced
it jolted
me and made me think
without
too much thought I
press buttons into the web chat
the ones that click in
and save Anne Waldman’s words so
I can come back to them later
and create
some kind of pale
nexus
at a birthday party I try to describe
my approach to Hinge
I just look at them I say and say no
G is a therapist and able
to look me in the eyes
he did such a number on you
she says and then goes to find a beer
to cure a headache
in the second series of Planet Earth
a heat camera follows
a tiger
in a Mumbai park at night
men walk along the path
and the tiger attacks and kills a piglet
I text snapshots
of caterpillars
eating lemon leaves
to you or whoever is tracking
the flight paths of smoke and
bearing witness
to the Bureau of Meteorology
a man sits on a boat
in the harbour
and I am reminded
of my uncle’s old bull Boss
huge and heavy breathing
as he swayed between the heifers
his hundred children
learning to walk through
the afternoon light to
the time where the hooves fly into
the punctum that life is
good and good for you
taste the warmth the vibes a climax
same network same time
it has not been such a long time between vibrations
I am so bored by
what has happened I can’t
stop telling people about it
I walk into Vinnies
with an idea
of buying a Bible
and walk out
with Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus
both work for me
I would like to know what HG
was reading
around the time
she went berserk
and stabbed a pen into X the painter’s
mother’s hat
every morning
a daughter in a high school
dress gets on the 418 bus
semi-accompanied
by an alternating parent
in city clothes
who sits at the front
while she curls up
under headphones in a seat at the back
she has seen me get pulled
off the bus by ticket inspectors
there is a part
of me that wants to tell her don’t
worry I talked my way out of it be proud
of me impressed by the way I handle myself
* I am having an HG summer *
I shrilly text my sister
lying on the concrete
at Ashfield pool and
paraphrasing
‘graceful easy kilometre’
from somewhere
in the diaries
all these European artists
all these bolshy Australian wives
maybe the problem is that I don’t know
how to sling an easy arm around a person
a couple kiss at a bus shelter near
Burwood Road I am lucky
to work in the #1 neighbourhood
in the city
where yellow signs
welcome home AC/DC and
a little girl calls me morning-tea-look
a phrase I say to her daily
and which has now become my name
her name a four-syllable reference
to the canoe journey
of the first Māori
mine joy
at the sight of biscuits I have
fantasies about seeing the dog
slow-motion visuals
of him running towards me other times
he is waiting for me at the front door
he has remembered where I live now
and has come to me
dry heaving in the backyard
I cannot bear to tell my sister
/ I am doing well /
/ my body did not ovulate this month /
I have washed the fragments of Malabar
abalone shells three separate times
letting them dry out the back
then out the front
and finally on my
windowsill
where their moss chips away in the sun
HG would hate this
who the hell wants a life like mine?
I go walking without the dog
am appalled by the quickness of it
the way in which I reach places when I say I will
the OT talks through parallel play
as the little girl attaches rubber bands
to gridded nails while the others build a
Magnatile house beside her
MB’s book is a mission a slog
of ideas about river women daughters
incessant droning about botanical names
I walk back into Vinnies and find a Gideons Bible a passage
that states that a man who divorces a woman must not marry
her again for she has been defiled
in the new house
maybe the problem is I have
not published an essay
two girls sit at the Marion light rail station energetically pulling
items out of paper Sportsgirl shopping bags to show the other I think
my whole day is worth it because of this
when I want to lie down and cry at work I think
about how I will write a story about it when I quit and I will
write it funny and win like Nora Ephron how many
times can someone text good luck with the book before it feels like a hex
when I was
twenty-one
abortion
was not decriminalised
in Queensland I laid in bed I laid in bed
googling protest frequencies googling protest frequencies
and generic costings
of procedures HG goes
to her analyst
about her two
and holds
an expensive silk scarf
to her face
walking up the hill
to the high street
I do not put my earphones
in until I have listened
for the wattlebird and
whoever is at the
blockade outside
what was the Prime Minister’s
office until he said
it was their fault
he had to move
I set up a selection
of ceramic houses on the buffet
by the dining table
at night when I light candles
inside them my housemates
make comforting noises the village is awake
I am not invited
to the HG symposium
because I have given up
on being around writers
and also I am not one
and also I don’t really
introduce myself
she has no idea
what kind of shoes I am wearing
probably boots or sandals my feet
mugging hers
in the Spanish wheatfields
a woman who we extravagantly
and behind her back
call Barcelona bruja catches up to us
she reads our tarot cards
at an outside table under a tree
looks me dead in the eyes
and says it will end soon
trying to march
across the Harbour Bridge
in bursting rain
I see a five-year-old Syrian girl
from work standing
on a barricade and holding a flag
this week her word is ‘cake’
sometimes every year watching the
marathon pretending I still live there
don’t live there am in a collapsing fibro shack
hotspotting a livestream
J’s poem is good he
looks trembly and worthy of worry
or at least a text chain
love the bit in the essay he wrote about us
where he remembers his charley horse
my instructions on how
to stretch it out
sitting side by side M and I say
we are not going to get too into it and soon we are almost crying
microplastics having babies the 100 proof evil
of turning communities against each other
not caring if they take our data because what will they steal
apart from four hundred dollars
and the regularity with which
our uterine lining leaves our bodies our lives our lives our lives
it is January 26th &
I have gotten pretty good
at remembering my dreams
last night I was in a large house
with a big kitchen
that had to be closed
down like a shift before you could move
into the lounge room huge windows
and doors
opening onto a balcony
opening onto a beach someone had
picked flowers big multiheaded red
things with dark green glossy leaves
and put them in vases
throughout the house
the flowers
drop black seeds around the vases
and I know more than everyone else
that this means animals will come flocking
and crazed to the house they do bombarding
the windows of the lounge room breaking
them off their frames and launching around the walls
owls bats feral cats something in between
in the kitchen I am safe because
I have put on a film The Secret of Roan Inish
no one else wanted to watch it so a blockbuster
is on in the next room am I sulking ?
hiding in the kitchen and missing
out on the action
as I sweep
up the black seeds from beneath
my bunch of flowers
scatter them
on the beach outside and return
to announce that this room is safe
no one comes to join me
I have gotten pretty good
at checking my phone
as soon as I wake up
and soon I am googling portaledge
and the likelihood of one falling
down the cliff face the internet
says that even with portaledge failure
the climber is still
clipped in to the rock
how deep do these bolts
go when are they checked how early
is too early to think about
what I would do if I was there
well now I am watching
climbing videos and hear
the scream of a woman
as she falls
in the long dark naturally
this is all because
the man climbed the building
yesterday one of the women
commentators now the scream
I know so well I have had some
sort of sinus thing for
weeks now metres of green and yellow
gunk pouring out of my face
and tooth pain that I didn’t know
was part of the deal every morning
a sort of gasping awake
turning
until my mouth can feed my brain
drinking
something to wet my throat sitting
up until the snot is ready to leave
and the pressure at the front of my
skull goes down a bit I am not an out
for dinner person right now don’t put me
in a place where I can’t regularly leave stand
outside use tissue after
tissue to make it possible to talk again
I remember
a similar feeling champagne
problems when my wire retainer detached
from my lateral incisor
and flapped in my mouth
the generations are slipping I can’t afford the dentist
like the teen dental plan used to and so for months
spoke with a lisp my tongue catching
on the wad of glue and wire and eventually stopped
talking altogether I remember trying
to accept—
walking up to the stage
with my tongue bending the wire
to the roof of my mouth
hoping
it would not drop
in the middle of me saying
thank you this is very nice standing in the kitchen
oscillating between tea and coffee
except coffee does this sort of thing
where it makes me want to faint L says
please get that checked out
but also M said
we can get a treat coffee before the march
so I’ll save all of that for that outside
in the yard
the fairy lights are dragging
and I wind them up click them back
into themselves the solar panel feebly
bleeping after days
in the sun and my togs
on the bricks
metres away
from the chair
I put them on it is windy
and grey the sun watchable
behind a thick film of cloud I like standing out here
in my nightdress planting my feet
outside my hiplines a cup of tea
like a shell in my hand
if you stand on a chair you can see
my favourite tree
eating a yard down the laneway
when I give tours of the house
come and see the new place I end with the tree
pulling two chairs out
from the table
and linking up
with the guest to see the view
right now the yard
full of compacted cardboard boxes
plastic cartons of beer cans
an extra washing machine
booked to be dumped
next Friday in lieu of the replacement
a swishy LG dropped off
by a man named Jez
who called me sweetcakes
M and I flower power girls
for offering to help in our bare feet
and his previous client’s wife a bitch
for not liking the fridge he found them
youse can have a whole year
warranty though he says
he did a number
on us obviously
the thing he called
a King’s Cross model is done up like a blouse
the rubber seal glittering
with a layer of silver spray paint
that slowly erodes with the loads
to smile teeth of blossoming black mould
a few days later the fridge starts to go
and I try praying
don’t make us have to call Jez
again come on
fridge and it works the freezer
starts talking
and the milk does not get chunky
I walk
back up the hall with my cup
the lounge room built
with the attitude of a terrace house
is dark for the daylight hours
until we turn the lights on
finally outside
we are talking about All Fours
after buying a coffee in a café
where a man dressed
entirely in Australian flags
was eating eggs
his little bucket hat
pushed back off his face
for focus
it turns out Miranda July
is too sexy
for some people
meanwhile M and I
bawl
on Sydenham Road
anti anti
tampon scene
when I’ve coached a diva cup
instead I say I love the passage
that describes each moment as immaculate
an unwillingness to leave any scene
washing dishes sex
sitting on the bus why walk
into the next one when we have all this here
why move into the next scene
an English couple
looking bemused
on Elizabeth Street
asking someone
in overalls to explain
why people would be so upset about a day
who could be against a day
the sun gloriously rising and setting
with or without cloud
the median daily deaths
in the world dependent
on the breaths and proclivities
of the people in charge of the explosions
the aid blockages the thankful ineptitude
to successfully detonate a ball bearing bomb
or walk without slipping
across slick Minnesotan ice
at Central Station a man
runs into the crowd his blue flag cape blaring
lying on the grass in
front of the Yabun stage
covered in gozleme oil G uses her Jungian knowledge
to analyse my dream the animals
are your base desires she says you’re nervous you will lose
them while you aren’t dating anyone
should I date someone I say no she says
and we walk to drink a beer
at the Marrickville library
two pigeons briefly mate
outside the window the cock
rushing the hen on the well-designed
public seating
when finished he jumps
to the floor and walks around to the café
while she sits hunched and quiet
on the concrete bench
in the toilets at the Vic two girls
bemoan a situation I have
a body count of 5
one says why would he call me a slut
in the next cubicle
I have decided to say yes to life
or at least Hinge
and now I am listing
my Letterboxd top 4
with an unnatural glee
who am I a PhD wet nurse
or a person with real furniture
and a refusal to fall in love
with another sessional academic
L texts saying quick
send me a poetry recommendation
to give to A I say don’t do it or Midwinter Day
