izzy

it’s funny how they call it ‘flying’
when you’re actually just pelting along on solid earth
you could not be more tied to the ground
this is perpendicular warfare,
this is the surface you are moving over,
owning, reinventing, destroying

cheeks like razors clanging against steel air
eyes watering and sparkling with piss-weak sun
snot pouring down face, whipped away or plastered down slick

your lungs are screaming, ‘YEAH AIR,
YEAH AIR, GET IN ME’
your legs are burning, ‘ROAD,
I OWN YOU, I OWN YOU ROAD’

and the hills bow down
and the trees shower confetti leaves
and you arrive as a pile of quivering flesh
triumphant

*

sarah

There is a story in my family
Told to me my by father
Which goes: there was once a man
Who was your great-grandfather
Who lived in Lithuania.
And one day, he was told
That the Tsar in Russia needed troops
To help fight the revolution
Lithuania sent its sons
Victory was expected
And so your great-grandfather
Kissed his wife and children
And marched off to battle.
The revolution went badly
And after a confused sortie or two
The Lithuanian men were dismissed
And that was that.
So your great-grandfather
Was left to walk his way home
With not a penny to his name
And not a thing on his back
But his army clothes
And army boots
And army pack.
And he trudged
Through winter snows
And summer storms
For two whole years
At which point he arrived back home
Right on dinner time
And he burst right in
Without so much as a hello
His wife and children
(Presuming him dead)
Stared in terror
As this bear of a man
Grizzled and bearded and grime-smeared
Strode into their kitchen
Heaved the just-roasted chicken from the table
And ate it, right there
With his paws and his teeth
Their father the beast
Returned from the war.

In hindsight, I think:
It’s only 750 km
From St Petersburg to Lithuania
And Google Maps reckons
That I could do it on foot
In 150 hours
(and that’s not even power walking).
So I imagine the things he did for those years.
The stables he slept in
The drunkards who cheated him
The whores who consoled him
The fingers after fingers
Who pointed him astray
The wheeling, wide foosteps
Of his leathered, lost feet.
The crack in the rock face he found
Somewhere in Latvia
That lead him to a land
That was ruled by wild beasts
Dancing on their hind legs
And crowned with sweet flowers
Who taught him to waltz
To the tune of the bees
And who taught him to hunt
With his nails and his teeth
They teased out his hair
So it covered him in fur
And when he was ready
They sent him back home
Made as holy as morning
And as sacred as dew
And he spent all his days
As his children watched, wide-eyed
Enchanting the saplings
To sway as he sang.

*

izzy

those days when you want to write an entire novel on your skin
in felt tip pen, permanent marker,
like it’s not already there
like you’re not just peeling back layers
so people can see the words already written in bone, in fat and sinew

is it just like a courtesy thing?
to pour your wine into a glass when you’re drinking
the whole bottle by yourself?

do you think ‘maybe this is going too far’
when you’re sitting here listening to a mixtape
of songs about suicide

chosen by your favourite alt lit winnahs?

do you think ‘this is just wallowing’
thinking of whales on shores,
curling and uncurling your fingers

do you think ‘this is an endoscopy of sadness’
collecting data to be analysed
and turned into bad art later

and you want to lick
granules of glass off your lips
just to see what it would feel like

in your head, that’s not a violent impulse
it’s more like sugar
fairly harmless
not bloody and raw and dribbling down your face
and staring at you in the mirror like
‘what the fuck did you do?’

*

sarah

Shopping list:

Icy poles. Zooper Doopers, preferably. Failing that, Frosty Fruits.
Zucchini.
Cucumber.
Quick, get something else so it doesn’t look as though you’re just going to go home and eat a packet of icy poles by yourself while using vegetables as dildos oh god.
Bananas (goddamn it).
Quick quick quick find the least cock-shaped item in sight quick.
Capsicum (phew).
Mushrooms.
Apricots.
Nectarines.
Bread.
Cash out.
Cool breeze.
Traffic lights.
Night.
Feet on the gutter.
Kiss on the forehead.
Punch in the gut.
Aching rush.
Breathless need.
Actual need.
Like an occy strap between your legs.
Pulling you back towards that body.
Man goes green.
Step into road.
Flash of air.
Stumble back.
Cyclist careening through a red light.
No helmet.
No apologies.
Take a moment.
Step back forward back forward.
Like a drunk cat.
See the street’s eyes on you.
People cats cars all glowing.
Shake down.
Eyes front.
Look cool.
Find car keys.
Drive.

*

izzy

last week, I woke up and my room was dripping in gold.
not gold like gold leaf/carats/sequins/grills
but like orange fire.

all the goldfish in the entire city had escaped
schlepped themselves over here to hang off the light
sticking to the carpet and the walls,
some of them swimming in the air and blowing bubbles
just to watch me sleep.

at first, it was weird
but now I can’t sleep without their thousand tiny eyes on me.

*

sarah

I haven’t thrown up since I was seven
Sliding queasily around an ice skating rink
Then arriving home to vomit out the apple
That my mother provided to quell my nausea
I remember the hot foul red mess in the bowl
And now, twenty-five, I am on my knees
Kowtowing to a faintly reeking pink toilet
Spitting out foam like a leaky tap
Wobbly all over, retching and heaving,
But there’s nothing coming out
And every twenty minutes, I walk in white-lipped
And walk out pink-lipped and shaking
All the lead up, no performance
I think I’ve forgotten how to lose control.

*

izzy

20 non-essential things I wanted to tell you today:

1. my fingers are little ice sticks –
would you suck on them to keep me warm?

2. the intensity with which some people live their lives makes me want to scream
in a happy, running, jumping kind of way

3. sometimes I want to change my name
but then I think that is just a feeble attempt to let go of all the baggage and privilege and disadvantage
and personhood that goes with it

4. I don’t know if it is ok to want that.

5. ‘sex’ is the most googled word after the phrase
‘the opposite of’
now I really wonder what the opposite of sex is

6. oh. the opposite of sex is a movie
starring Christina Ricci and Phoebe from Friends
and also that guy from the Big Bang is in it

7. I feel

8. there probably isn’t a way to describe the feeling I got when I asked you what you’d do if next time you saw me I never wore bras anymore just Hawaiian shirts and feather earrings and no pants
and you said ‘probably just roll with it’

9. me and Ben talk in brackets on gchat all the time
we get really inventive until we have like 10 different conversations going

10. my least favourite brackets are 2’s as brackets2 but I think the +brackets+ are pretty cool

11. Ben and I discovered that {these brackets} are the ‘sex brackets’
this is how you discreetly interject the conversation with news of nearby love-making noises
without disturbing the original flow

12. I got jealous of your breakfast
I couldn’t wait til morning
I made myself avocado on Ryvita with lemon, salt and tabasco

13. it made me feel like I was home

14. there are a lot of beautiful things I can think of right now
and one of them is the little curve your muscles and tendons make
just above the backs of your elbows

15. I think lemon, salt and some form of chili are my essential flavourings
and fresh herbs – like coriander, how can you not like coriander?

16. I keep wondering about whether I should take down the photo of my friend who died that is on my wall
it’s a weird bunch of photos.

17. there are quite a few photos of me kissing boys I used to date up as well

18. I used to love the time-span and reach of these photo booth photos and that they celebrate things I felt about people that I maybe no longer feel but it’s still comforting and nice to know I did feel once

19. I don’t feel entirely associated with the person in those photos any more

20. I still haven’t put up that photo of my Dad yet.

*

sarah

when I love, I love like a child, dragging
a stuffed toy by the arm, blind to
every stain, mark and suspicious burn,
sleeping with its battered face pressed stickily
against my own, and every time the stuffing
pops, blurts out into the world, I
poke it back in and messily stitch the hole
over and over until you can’t see the fur
for the mending. til one quiet afternoon,
the whole thing collapses into cotton blubber,
strewn across the carpet, and even these
bits of sad detritus, even these, I
gather and press to my nose
and breathe

*

izzy

I made an OK Cupid profile looking for
a double
so I could follow myself around
critique my actions
and better interrogate my life

lying supine and divine and squash-faced
I put my Macbook on its side to face me
so I am curved around the screen, holding it gently.
I think about kissing it
but there is no passion in the white glow

I am moored here until my double takes over
the carpet around my bed is a sea
you cannot put your feet in it
it stings

the refresh button is a genius invention
except when nothing changes

where are all the Amazons?
the glowing 6-foot women
with whip-crack laughs and powerful thighs

where are the women of action,
the real deal and raw sex appeal
who know what they want and always get it?

who will be my double?
answer me
who will act for me?

webs of self-doubt are more like spit than gossamer
yesterday, this body was amazing
today it is a pointless thing

*

sarah

We are so very fragile.
Swinging on skeins of spider-thread
Arcing through our blustery days
Cocooned in the knowledge
That gossamer is stronger than steel.
But death has no regard
For the measures of man –
To the forces of night
Those tight-woven strands
Are nothing more than a web in the wind

*

izzy

the cereal box screaming STRENGTH
the cereal box screaming ALERTNESS
the cereal box screaming ENERGY

the cereal box screaming
WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR

the cereal box screaming
for hours

this is me wearing disco pants
this is me trying to explain the reasons why I love you
without using my hands

this is me wearing ridiculous sunglasses that I got from Primark
they feature a sparkly macaw and palm tree
they are literally the greatest sunglasses I have ever seen
but maybe I wasn’t really looking before now

I shaved off a lot of my body hair
and felt kind of sexy and special and weird
and worried for my feminism

no one is looking anyway, so I guess I am
doing it for myself
but I still don’t know if it’s actually just internalised misogyny
or something that isn’t really me

fuck that, no –
fuck that
I am my body’s only judge
and I think this body, this human body
is fucking incredible

this is the sound of a tree falling in a wood
and shouting GERONIMO

this is me with my hands tied and my mouth open

*

sarah

Possum all deady-bones, deady onna roadside
Spillin out splatty-face, sick-a-dog dead
Possum all scatter-spray, rock-a-bye fly come
Sitty onna eyeball, snack-a-bite red
Big fatty car come, sing a fatty rock song
Rumble-down highway, breathy-burp lead
Rolla-ball wheel come, picky uppa poss-bum
Dunna gotta worry now, dunna got a head.

*

izzy

watching the way your hands move
when you talk
is like falling through clouds

they let all the killer whales
back out into the wild
after the public turned their backs on them
too afraid to watch them kill another person

now
all the killer whale trainers walk around the water parks,
listless and heavy-eyed
tapping on the glass
hearing ghost whale noises.

they still need us
we are indispensable
now the seals are the main attraction, cos
the seals don’t love anyone
the way they love us

I hold your hand as we clean out the tanks,
rub the glass with chux and enviro-safe detergent,
it’s awkward but nice and
I mop the concrete floors with my free hand

*

sarah

For years, planes terrified me.
I was so profoundly aware of the height
Of the sheer unlikelihood of being there,
Nesting in the clouds
Held up by ingenuity and hope.
I could feel every airy inch from the ground
With every bump, kaleidoscopes of gory outcomes
Danced behind my eyes.
Now, I’ve replaced my fear
With a sort of fluffy, pink lack of comprehension.
The way a parent cocks an ear to a son’s door
And placidly chuckles at the music seeping through.
I’ve finally decided that I can’t actually be airborne.
It‘s just not feasible. It’s all pretend.
And so I sit for an hour or so in a metal capsule
While swarthy men turn handles below the plane
Which move the delicately painted backdrop
Beneath the windows.
A smoke machine, a few hydraulics
It’s all for show.
Everyone here is in on it.
The glassy flight attendants, the sweaty businessmen.
All of them.
Except, perhaps, the Chinese woman in the row behind
Clutching a doll of a child who can’t be alive
Can’t be that perfect, that still.
That poor woman. Shunted onto an impossible flight
To grieve an impossible life
Face as serene as a painted lake
Not daring to look at her grim little bundle
Which won’t stir, not even at the thump of landing
Not even when we all file off onto the same tarmac we left
Where, through some trick of the light
The streets look a little different
But I know better.
I know.

*

izzy

mornings, or afternoons
when I wake up and
interrogate myself in the mirror

I think ‘you would say I look cute’
and ‘I am letting myself go’

I don’t know why I keep putting it in my mouth
soy cheese is terrible
like literally disgusting
this is one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten

the problem is, once you taste the good shit
you can never go back
even if you’re severely allergic
sometimes I wish I’d never tasted real cheese.

*

sarah

Whoever said that nature was peaceful had never seen it.
Nature is all about fucking and fighting and dying
And being torn apart by tiny insects
And running so hard your lungs might pop
From everything bigger or faster or meaner than you.
It’s being the swamp gum that jumped toward the sky
And screamed back at the ravenous bushfires
And kicked out at the rustling things at its feet
For two hundred years
And then, after two centuries of fighting,
Swayed and fell and was eaten by everything.
What a fucking joke.
And I’m not sure whether love exists
But if it does, all it means
Is forgiving forty-five times a day
Because it’s easier than snapping back.

*