izzy

standing on top of a small waterfall, breathing
coming down on you like a pressurised heartbeat
falling and standing tall all at once
this flow like thunder

lush green hills and the smell of dynamic lifter
contemplate the permanence of a park rubbish bin
taking selfies in front of a toy town panorama
break the light with a fist

*

sarah

It is an unlovely thing, this life of mine
A spider takes no sweethearts, takes no friends
Swoons for nothing but her crystalline web
But what a lover is the night
The crisp cold wind, the earth turning over
The heartbeat percussion of the chattering bugs
And above it all, the sweet white moon
Singing her arias to the clap-a-long stars

*

izzy

the constant rubber thuck of a basketball
the court caught in the centre of a grand old bandstand
amplified sounds of children on screaming swings, on see-saws
gibbous moon rising, clashing orange against electric blue

there’s a dog barking, equal measures panicked and joyous
like it’s searching for something and keeps thinking it’s found it

teenagers enacting a complicated ritual of unnameable affection
limpid arms flapping in the wind, necks angled taut toward each other
she walks to the sea, he turns back to the court
get your head in the game, get your head in the game

in the corner, an empty electric chair languishes beneath a tree
a crumpled man walking upright and tall, back and forth
back and forth on the support bars for hours

*

sarah

He never knew til now that fire could bellow. Never knew how wet the water in him could feel. He watched a bead of sweat, or a tear, rattle down his nose and quiver for a moment at the brink. Throw itself onto the flat steel in his fist and slink out of sight. Coward, he thought, coward. Come back here and fight. There are a thousand more like you still to be carved out of these eyes.

*

izzy

watching the graceless curve of adolescent bodies bending into one another
taut, tensed and aware they swivel 320 degrees in every direction at once
checking to see if they’re being watched, but not quite aware
what impact their actions would have on the watcher

skins too big for their rubber bounce-back bones
floundering inside loose bodies
trying to find a way to stand that will fit

over-attentive boyfriend, arms like a vice around her waist
every lapse in conversation marked
with a smattering of lip stains across pale cheeks

trailing silver threads, searching for a mouth she might finally offer
the circle presses in, all friends here, all bodies one body
a mass that moves with fluorescent confidence and sweet kicks swagger
wrists clutching in monkey grip although no one is falling
dark circles under both their eyes.

*

sarah

The crossing lights are clicking like a drunk crowd at a poetry slam
Slow and languid and totally out of time
Until the lights change, and this is the groove, man!
Applauding fervently, furiously, energizer bunny fast!
Til the colours tick over, and it’s back to the limp-fingered cigarette snaps

*

izzy

When I was small, I believed I could bring things back to life. If I just tried hard enough, if I poured enough love towards something, I could bring back the spark of life. I had evidence to support this. I would fish drowned bees out of the swimming pool and cup them in my hands, cocooning them in the warm dark space between my bony fingers, whispering through the cracks, envisaging them flying through huge forests of dandelions and daisies filled with pollen my face salty and wet as I peered in to see if they would rise. They did. This worked with all kinds of small animals. I’ve saved baby birds, sick birds, skinks and all manner of insects. Standing in the mineral blue of the mediterranean watching small fish shimmer in the shallows, I’m reminded of the fish I couldn’t save. The tiny bait fish I found at the bottom of a fishing boat. Convinced it was still alive, or could be saved, I put it back in the water, again and again, held its little body in my hands and tried to find a spark in its glassy eyes. The fish darting through the water here are sand coloured and barely make a shadow. Little sea ghosts made of light and air. The swell of sea lapping at my ankles now reminds me of the day the ocean fell on me. The day you ceased. Garbled sounds of speaking underwater, and the slow push against the water’s resistance as I tried to walk on the ocean floor.

*

sarah

Banana eating for beginners:

Step one: Stand in front of your shelf in the pantry and try to will some sort of packaged snackfood to appear.

Step two: Upon failure of packaged snackfood to appear, notice solitary banana. Wonder how long banana has been there. Inspect banana for squishiness or blackness. Decide that banana is edible.

Step three: Open banana from the stem end. Immediately reminder Buzzfeed article explaining that this is the WRONG way to open a banana, and that monkeys know that, and that you’ve been doing it incorrectly all your life and god, how could you be so stupid, you are less intelligent than a monkey when it comes to banana opening (although possibly more intelligent in the realm of crossword puzzles).

Step four: Raise banana to lips. Immediately think of cocks. Almost as immediately feel a sort of feminist disappointment at yourself for thinking of cocks. Get into a confusing sort of out-of-body perve experience with yourself, where one half of you is thinking ‘Yeah, put it in your mouth’ and the other half of you just wants to eat a goddamn banana. Wonder whether this is you internalizing the male gaze.

Step five: Find a stringy bit of banana peel on the banana. Think back to the Buzzfeed article explaining about how this wouldn’t happen if you opened a banana properly.

Step six: Register that this banana is not particularly ripe. Marvel at how this banana could possibly be unripe, given that it has been sitting in the pantry for at least a week. Consider the fact that bananas are good at ripening other food. Wonder whether you need two bananas working in tandem to ripen each other.

Step seven: Discard banana peel into compost bin. Feel mildly smug about compost bin. Hold banana in left hand. Think about cocks again. Wonder how much banana porn exists. Imagine a montage of the places it would be possible to insert a banana. Feel mildly unwell. Finish banana. Wallow in existential dread.

*

izzy

Bright white light flooding the room and I’m sitting up in bed like a stunned roo waiting for the bullet. It’s 4am and as dark as it gets outside, that milky shade of blue – not bright enough to have my eyes squinting like two wretched asterisks. A hand. An outstretched palm, to be precise. This floodlight is some freaky shit. I follow the palm up to an arm clad in white robes and find a face framed with white light, grinning. An amused expression plays over sharp, androgynous features and wide, white eyes, tight black curls spilling foppishly over a soft, dark brow. I take the hand. I lean in, and I run my tongue all the way up this angel’s outstretched arm. I had expected it to taste like fog, like a fresh mist, but it’s unmistakeable. Eating a Reese’s cup is like giving an angel a hug with your tastebuds, and licking an angel is just like eating a Reese’s cup.

*

sarah

Look, I – look. This isn’t how I – look. You were – you are – I’ve never been good at this. Suffice it to say that when I look at you, I stop feeling like I’m going to throw up. And for me, that’s – that’s kind of a big deal.

*

izzy

my heart is beating like an outer suburbs doof
falling asleep imagining myself as a superhero
I have to close 10 pairs of eyes before sleep

*

sarah

You got eyes like a diamond mine, girl.
How many men have died trying to dig out some of that shine?

*

izzy

what happens when a person becomes a waterfall?
collapsing or cascading with continuous force
a wall of water breaking the surface tension
folding into itself and pushing on to the next thing

I want to feel the salt and weight of you
the jumping salmon swim of you
the rocks that hold the steady flow
and the leaf-boats teetering at the edge

*

sarah

Look, it’s baked beans or it’s nothing, kiddo. I know they make your belly all big and I know we’ll both be farting like a jazz band but it’s all we got right now. How about this, then? Let’s pretend they’re whatever you want them to be. What you reckon? You can pick any food in the world and we’ll make believe it’s that. Caviar? Don’t rightly know what that tastes like, bub, but it sure is fancy. Pink, I reckon. Pink like a Barbie Dream House. Yeah, that’s right, we’ll eat our pink caviar out of our golden bowls. Real fancy. Real classy, like on the telly. Like all those all time movies with the beautiful ladies in puffy dresses and the men in coats with the split in the back. Would you look at all this caviar? This right here is five hundred dollars worth of caviar. How much, you say? Twenty-million hundred worth? Well, gosh, you’re right, this is a treat! Hoo boy, I hope we can have caviar again some time! You don’t? I know. I know, kiddo. But we’re the best at pretending. We’re the number one pretenders in the whole world. And one day, you know what? Your old dad is going to buy you so much caviar you won’t be able to eat it all. You’ll have a fat old baked bean belly from all the caviar in your little tum. Just you wait and see. Just you wait.

*

izzy

the old men scat and doo-wap as they lie sunbaking on the shingle
pot bellies sagging and grinning from decades of mangare
even the word is round and full, flavoured with ripe tomato and vino rosso
banana hammocks or budgie smugglers, spraying themselves with oil
like, seriously amazing tans – like, how do they even do it?
pockets full of rocks that are actually fragments of tile,
approximately half the pebbles here are actually smoothed bits of glass
debris that has been smoothed, crashed and rolled against stone
flick water over shoulders and let a cheeky droplet run between the blades
do they do it on purpose? save up the broken bits for this?
keep the pieces when someone breaks a glass, a bottle, a plate
then carry it to the sea and release it to the waves?

*

sarah

Guys, can we take a second to consider how truly outrageous reproduction is?
I mean, the dude PEES in the chick’s STOMACH and then she grows a PERSON who gets magically BIGGER without anyone having to DO ANYTHING.
I mean, that is INSANE.
That is TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE, and yes, I mean that literally.
And that is why the school has declined to offer sex ed as part of the syllabus.
Because the whole thing is clearly a government conspiracy cover-up story.
We’re going to get to the bottom of this (now Jimmy, that’s enough, it’s not funny).
We’ve been lied to for too long, and somebody’s got to take a stand, and that somebody is Saint Sybil’s Primary School for Boys (and now, Girls! 1963 – present)!
We will know the truth, children.
And we will not rest until we do.
Also, Taco Tuesday has been cancelled due to Alfie Ferguson’s “kidney bean allergy.” I know you’ve all been looking forward to this for weeks (frankly, we all have), but let’s try not to take it out on Alfie and his truly ridiculous purported “allergy” (which just quietly, was probably invented by his mother to get back at the school for the D minus her son received in Home Economics).
Now, let’s sing the school song.

*

izzy

I wanna yell ‘FUCK YOU’ from the top of a burning building
I wanna yell ‘CAN’T YOU SEE WE’RE BURNING?’
I wanna yell ‘CAN’T YOU FEEL THE HEAT ON YOUR FACE?’

If I Had A Gun, I wouldn’t shoot it
but when you don’t see your targets as human
it’s probably a whole lot easier than I can imagine

Not All Men tell the other half of the world
that their lived experience is non-existent
or unimportant, or that it’s cool, we’re equal now
because this is how you slowly make someone believe they’re crazy

the Rape Joke is that it’s happened to most of us
even if it’s hard to call it that
even if it wasn’t as violent as we expected

sometimes I wanna scream ‘MENSES’ or ‘MISOGYNY’
from up here on the ledge with the wind crying too
because these are the pains in my gut that won’t go away
and they’re sort of interlinked

and I feel like yelling about things doesn’t change anything
especially if no one is listening
but it can make you feel better
even if you’re just getting the echo back

*

sarah

There was something gothic about her silences
About the way she could carve a moment into soot-singed granite
Dust it with snowflakes and, just in case you were getting too comfortable
Spatter it with a rain of birdshit

*

izzy

the sea is thrusting itself against the base of this island
smashing over the rocks and into the sea walls
like it thinks this persistence will be rewarded
like this is the only way to get what it wants
like force is the way to a land-locked heart
that maybe just wants to stand
and greet the sea in its own way
or not at all
the Earth is 70% water
slowly chipping away at the land
sucking away the sand banks
pulling the rocks under
these human bodies are 60% water
we are made of the same stuff,
us and the Earth,
us and the sea the same
but when you look out at night, you can’t see any horizon
just ocean, everywhere
turning the lights off
trying to blend itself into the shore
dashing the edges to sediment
trying to swallow us whole and take us under

*

sarah

I had to blackmail you into getting out of bed this morning with the prospect of your own inexorably approaching death
I think I am correct in saying that we have officially reached crisis point

*