1.
Grief is the feeling you have
the process you pass through
like a tunnel but more
physiological / a response to losing
some thing / some one
you once loved.So when they call to tell me you are dying
to describe the room in which they have laid you down
to tell me that my mother is there by your side
and my sister is on her way and all the four horsemen
of your personal apocalypse have gathered
at the window to wait and watch you as you go /
when they tell me that your breath is slowing / that your
heart – that stubborn muscle –
beats irregularly now, is falling still, is stopping
now stopping
now stoppedGrief is not what I feel
2.
Three days later I wake
far from home in a dark townWe have lost two fathers now
Mine and yours in quick succession and
Although I have nothing to say
I get up and lay out words on paper
because I need them, because
they are the only things that make sense in this
insensible world.
I need them to hold me here
on this side of whatever wall there is between us and our dead
I write down my second father’s name
and the name of my first father
and my own name
and your name
I write down the first words I knew and then the last
each on a new sheet of paper / but there is
something wrong
each time I lift the pen the words are goneI do not know the names of things
there are no words for thisI am
far from home in a dark town and the words – all words
all language – are draining from me like the blood
they drained from you after you died.We are empty now
We are hollowSoon, we might truly become
what we first were.3.
He keeps coming back
old ticker, old fucker
his hands reach around my throat and
squeeze
I can feel the heat of his
burned skin
the stink of his breath
the grip he has on mebut then he is fading he is turning
to smoke or, no, it is more like the air
of the dark separates him from himself
As if the death outside of him
has collided with the death inside himsoon, they will meet on the surface of his
disrupted skinI am alive, he says.
No, I tell him. you are dead.We spend weeks, months, in this dance
We go around in circles.
It is as if I am
roadkill and he is waiting. He waits
the way a vulture waits
by the side of the road
waiting for a break in the traffic
to strike4.
We don’t bury our fathers / any more
We don’t lay their bodies in the earth.There are no memorials for the dead white men
who loved us / who hurt us
whose fists broke and then mended
our hearts / our bones.We burn them like Vikings …
not really. There are no warships / flaming on open seas.Only women in suits
who sit us down in air-conditioned rooms
serving tea and sandwiches
while your bodies are cleaned and plasticised
prepared for viewingDays later, your body is delivered
into a furnace that burns without flames
And your ashes are vacuumed up
by a certified technician who seals you
into a baby-blue plastic box
in a white cardboard boxyou are heavy, now,
your death has a material weight
you sit in the corner of the roomone more thing
to move around5.
My family cannot agree on where to spread your ashes
and so you are divided
one last time
my mother’s portion
is weighed in the kitchen scalesA kilogram of your ashes for her
and another for each
of your childrenIt is a kind of joke / this last quibbling
over where to throw the soft grey
flakes – the divided portions that remainI hear a rumour that my mother
poured a cup of you into the toilet
and shat on you one last timeI can’t take any of this seriously without getting
everything wrongBut how else are we to take ourselves, our lives,
given the seriousness of our plight?6.
I wake in the night / choking again on
your hands drifting down the channel of my throatI hear you laughing in the next room
telling stories in the last person.
I hear you telling the moon
that a story is not what’s necessary / not what’s needed
there is no way to make any sense of things, no need
for a storyonly a life
7.
I wish we could message the dead
I would write to tell you all the things
I kept from youI would make you listen
to my heart keening like a curlewI would make you feel the tendons / crack
I would make you feel the throb of that mended
break in my arm and the dimple in my
skull from where you
slammed my head against the wallI would make you vomit up my other, first, father
give him back to me, goddamnit
give him backhe was not yours to eat / to love
to lose8.
September. The season turns and you
are still not hereI take it back, old man
I take it all back
I take it hard, I take it harder than I can explain
We are here, far from home
in a dark townthere are no words
there is no grieving for the ones
we never loved
the ones who never loved us in return
- 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
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