November 2010
18 posts
winter
the winter is unfamiliar to him, a creeping cold that gets inside so that nothing is warm anymore. he is a cold, lonely boy. an outer skin of ice begins to form around him. we watch as it swallows him slowly, beginning at his hands and feet. a frozen boy without love. the ice makes cracks where his joints move, it is ugly.
one night a girl made of fire comes so close he begins to melt. the feeling...
boy dylan
my child is fluttering beneath my heart. a tiny butterfly with delicate wings. i feel like my stomach is a sleepy world, where everything is warm and everything trembles with the gentle rock of a mother’s heartbeat. he is only tiny and he cannot hear yet, but i sing to him. lullabies inspired by the way i imagine him. a blonde baby with a swollen bottom lip and round eyes. a boy that will...
1 tag
metal mouth
i was a handsome girl. i would have been five, maybe six when my momma cut my long, red hair all off. i’d wanted to grow it to my toes and wear it in plaits so that one day a charming boy would come and i could hang it out the window and he could rescue me. but my momma didn’t want me rescued, she lifted it all up above my head in a fist and attacked it with the scizzors. i remember the sharp...
we are all miserable things
we all pretend we have freedom. sitting quietly on the train, wearing clothes in the summer heat, waiting in lines, marrying, replying to a ‘how are you?’ from a stranger with a variant of ‘good, thanks’ and maybe a line about the weather.
but real freedom, the freedom that only truly exists to the mentally incapable who are too lost in their own worlds to be caged by ours, will always rush...
sunday
he holds my hand as i walk the streets with my eyes closed. the cars thunder on beside us, the sun keeps on with the heat on my face, and the wind still yawns in my ears.
from here, close eyed and with my fingers in his fingers, i can see.
magnetic island
we were so young and naive the year we almost died. we grew our hair long and we both regretted not disappearing that summer. that magnificent summer where the world was perfect and we knew nothing but love.
you would drive me in your father’s car (which was as beaten up as your mother but made music come alive) along picnic bay. the sun was so angry it made the roads look wet in the...
for all i am worth i am nothing
bus ride
there is a boy, drunk on the bus, he must be 9, possibly 10, long limbed with a shaved head and large eyes. ADHD, one woman murmurs in denial. but i am so close i can smell it on his breath. his eyes are bright and blue like a cloudless sky. he stands in the aisle, dancing awkwardly to a beat the bus creates by hitting bumps and curves in the road. he shouts out wordlessly and falls and falls....
airplane ride
people slump against seat side, asleep as the night spills in through the windows. we are alone up here, below the stars and above the clouds. we are quiet up here, letting the engine speak for us long and slow. she says ‘flyyyyyyyyyyyy’ and we fly above the world. we’re running from the sun, all of us. diving into shadowed cloud and holding our eyes shut.
i sit swallowing the wine in the air, to...
a red mess
this august is the month i get my first period. i know it will happen, of course, but when it comes i am shocked. my womb pulls and tears and wrings itself out like it is wet clothing. it hurts me so much i can’t even cry. i think maybe it misses the blood. that bright, sticky mess i collect curiously across my fingers in the shower. maybe it didn’t want it gone. but it goes. i dig my nails into...
summer, 1997
in our backyard the flowers have melted into the earth and our gallahs are dying from heatstroke. i am eight and i have a love-hate relationship with the heat. my mother is still young, her hair reaches her elbows and she is always laughing. she buys a blow up pool from the store and we spend forever blowing it up with our breath. eventually when it is done i sit in there naked with the hose on...
projector
when we were younger the world was a film. i remember my father taking me for drives in the night. my eyes were sleepy, blurring the street lights into many suns. i followed them to their deaths far behind us and i pressed my fingers against the cool glass, wanting to feel the outside air. we drove through the city and watched in awe the buildings standing miles above us. so high clouds circled...
a flowering child
something precious sleeps against my breast, a baby with a head of thick curling hair. her round lips sigh and yawn and it is the sound of the most fragile wind. her eyelashes are tiny, fluttering leaves. from seed a flower is grown.
with her birth i am reborn into a world of blushing cries. a world where nightmares of her suffering keep me from sleeping. a world of an all-consuming love, felt in...
decay
i trace my nipple and the tiny hills, goosebumps risen from the dirt-rose. i imagine my breast plump with red wine, red rivered streaks to my stomach from where the wine has dripped and not been drunken.
we are a beginning with no end. a pair of hands clung tightly, fingers between fingers. we are the soft gums of the mouth of the world, clinging to ever-rotting teeth that loosen and fall.
****
we were snorting lines off of our child’s back when we were sixteen. after the novelty wore off we snorted it from a large broken piece of mirror. i always found it kind of ironic, because it’s meant to be bad luck. well we were made of bad luck. we fucked bad luck and ate bad luck for tea.
i’ve never done heroin. kane says it wouldn’t be any good for me. says it’d...
disappeared
the tragic truth is i cannot appreciate things as they happen. only after it is long gone, a memory floating aimlessly in my mind, can i truly understand how beautiful the moment was. and by then it is often too late.
boys
i wish i was born a boy. i’d charm long-haired girls with pretty faces and tender hearts. i’d exploit their bodies and minds, to hang in my galleries, to write in my books, and i’d disguise it all with softly woven words of love. oh you poor beauties, how i’ve betrayed you all for my art. but forgive me because after all, i am a boy.
death of wonder
i carried you, my darling. through the streets of the world. your little body pressing into my bones, your legs and arms curled up softly. i sat on buses holding you, imagining you as a shy snail in his shell. i’d whisper, ‘don’t be afraid, i’m your mama’ and in answer you’d stir about all content in your warm home. i’d sing to you, little lullabies about...
February 2010
1 post
i have felt
my life is now chasing moments gone. a tent in the sand and my cousin and me fishing on the shore. young things throwing our lines out to the falling sun. speculating love and the size of the sky.
a gooseflesh night with feet in the river, a pressing wonder of warmth and touching and lip kisses. wading through muddy mangroves and being skin-sucked by mosquitos. holding the hands of my sisters....
August 2009
1 post
it was a lonely future for the lightlust youth
she was fourteen in denim cut off shorts with sticky iceblock a-drip down her forearms. she looked at me twice or three, but she never asked my name. i bit my teeth and sucked away a juicy, stutter-y hello (and the almost outloud thought of- ‘what a coincidence huh, we’re sucking from the same flavour popsicle. real good though ‘cause gee, isn’t it a hot noon?’)....
June 2009
2 posts
i am
a small insect crawling up your thigh in the small, dark of the night
a splinter in the palm of your foot, skin red and rejecting
sand in your eyes and mouth, in-between your wet toes
cancer. in your lungs and breasts and brain and skin.
but i am yours.
