a collection of words 
Anne Waldman typed

 into the Poetry Project New Year Marathon

    livestream chat 
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      tentacular Poetry Project  and keep the elections

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& Ossoff in your psyche

                       these days, poet power  change the

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         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