I share a café table in Redfern with a young man whose bitten nails are lacquered scarlet, or Hunter’s Pink, like a London bus, then roughly scraped at by his teeth. Let’s call him Dorian. His hands are large, pale and beautifully formed, their squareness implies both invention and practicality, his alabaster thumbs arc like Bacon’s. To him it is androgynous transcendence; to me it is purely transport with poetic nomenclatives, Monopoly’s real estate; the stuff of desolate, historical novels. It is Dickens sending his sons, cruelly burdened with ‘potential’, to Australia, Austen on A Mystery Tour, the Brontës looking for a rough gypsy or two. It is Blyton’s imperious ‘Parp-Parp’ taxonomy, Potter’s Puddle-duck’s paisley shawl. (The 328 bus to Chelsea, World’s End, ran aground here, its deluded shoppers shuffled through The Sales without a purse, or benefactor – but with grasping hands. Some unleashed their European grotesques – the less callous amongst them surprised themselves.) A man with cerebral palsy has fallen crossing a lane and crawls into its gutter, a local man helps him to his feet, leans him against a wall to regain his balance and checks his forearms and bare legs for injury. He hugs his rescuer as though he has pulled him from the sea. Heathcliff breaks from the man’s embrace, glowers and strides away, wolfhounds at his heels. Dickens’s sons gather after the fact. Dorian and I agree on, among other things, Plath’s delusions (her anglomaniacal brown study, sodden sheep, errant cottage garden romanticism, for which I too have a propensity) – how unfortunate they were for her, and how crucial it is to find someone with illusions as real as your own and make them flesh. (Vivienne Westwood described her 1965 ‘meeting’ with Malcolm McLaren as him being ‘a one-off. He was fascinating and mad, and it was as though I was a coin and he showed me the other side.’ Its thrall lasted fifteen years; at his 2010 funeral she wore a Gold Label headband, re World’s End unisex accessories, which stretched ‘Chaos’ across her forehead, re his mantra re cash, re her lost protagonist.) Dorian hints at a discreet deep disappointment. (He and his full-lipped, saffron and chrome-haired girlfriend parted two months ago.) Dispossessed urban seagulls levitate and resist above us like metamorphosing plastic bags and our other side’s intertwined other; mine has the blond shoulders, the flaxen fusilli, of the scrapped buffalo nickel, ‘Liberty’ on his flip side. (Horses bring their satin musculature to him, as I wake weighing words.) A worn meniscus rim, his proud man’s good soldier’s skin, flare at the Elysian edge of these feathered eclipses on Regent, just off Cope, beneath 2012’s Transit of Venus, re her night-sweat fevers, Westwood’s divine bustled cellulite, our hearts are high
and rocked silent.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones