‘Leg magic!’ I’d chant, swinging higher behind the badminton centre, flaunting Mum’s
earrings and Razzamatazz—nylon whoosh—and my barely hairy legs, ever-unat
-tended tenant of that gravelly South Hobart park where purple plums also burst philo
-sophically; Sophocles chronicled doom in the teens—smilelessly, I’d push mow the lawn,
The Cure’s Disintegration spuming, cumuli
apprehensive of Dad’s appalling
kernels of corn. Pre-hipster Balaclava the promised land until Alexander came out with
‘encephalopathy’—rapid detox from sex, Fox Mulder’s ultimates, poppy seed hament
-ashen. Cut to West Brunswick—uni share house dazed by The Annual, acid, Chianti,
red geraniums in terracotta pots lifted from neighbours’ porches; the perenn
-ial ‘Youse lazy skips
don’t belong ere!’/‘Raver freaks!’/‘Tofu
eatin queers!’ while tripping to the tram/op-shop/supermarket. SUPERB
APARTMENT, Easey St, Collingwood! Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Juju
needled the mind, Tina the scalp, tweaker after bloody tweaker
dealt in gobbledygoo at The Peel, hundred buck return cab
rides to Sunshine for Xanax blowouts, nothing but Nescafé and chapati
until payday. Every Clifton Hill jasmine the Hydra,
nasturtium a gory
wide-brimmed helmet as fluoxetine, nicotine, caffeine kneeled before zero.
In Cooee Bay I ran with curlews at new moon, shrieked ‘Adieu!’
to my fear of the night, searing it with full vocalic
horror, snorkled with bales of green sea
turtles, honed ‘T’estimo molt’ for a dreamy partisan in
-habiting Catalunya. On The Range the tipsy rainbow lorikeet
eases its brush-tongue from African tuliptree to African tuliptree, next door’s handsomish
dad’s gentle with the son who turns remote-control cars over with the sort of freedom I
ordered and doesn’t snarl, into a hairbrush, I only wanted something else to do but hang around, a cud
-gelling: … same-sex couples … (mark one box only) … ‘Ja! Oui! Ae!’

Note: ‘Double Acrostic’ includes several phrases from Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Suburbia’