izzy

undeniable evidence
I mean it’s obvious really
cats are deliberately misunderstood
the tell tale signs are always there
we’re speaking out against hateful ideology
our movement is growing at an explosive rate
a voice for cats
we want a voice for cats now
why is no one listening?
fight the good fight
pick your battles
take the red pill
debunk the myths
this is humanist counter-theory
this is egalitarianism
this is the way forward
the triumph of rationality
take the red pill
ideology mortally wounded and dying
one exposed lie at a time
hanging their heads in disbelief and shame
hopefully this will be a wake-up call for you
sometimes the good guys win after all

*

sarah

The world turns on a knife’s edge
this fat little 4 year old roaring lion-eyed on the train
we pretend comical terror, he growls louder and louder
the American tourists opposite roll their eyes to the white
the child begins to scream as we all avert our embarrassment
His mother sleeps on.
The strutting man in the aisles sits down opposite me
presses his knees into mine, locks his cock in his gaze
I turn into the biggest bitch in Naples
don’t fucking look at me, my face spits out silent
don’t even fucking dare. He asks where we’re heading,
we say we don’t understand
the 4 year old throws a 5 cent coin at my tits
the main opposite laughs
I glare at the plastic seat by his right knee
and try to immolate them both with my outrage

*

izzy

unbearable sadness moving in to your left arm
making it’s new house a home
your left arm a tenement for longing and loss
feeling loose and heavy always
dragging through viscous air
until you can’t bother trying to raise it
starting to tighten
starting to tighten and then also to lighten
one day looking down and realising your arm is gone
your whole left arm martyred and gone
but so is the sadness
so is the weight

*

sarah

In Naples, nobody has attempted to rob me, and I feel a strangely odd about that.
In Naples, two Italian teenagers pash on the seafront like they’re trying to leap into each other’s faces, like fish.
In Naples, the light is softer, or I’ve been told so many times that the light is softer that I think that it is. It could be pollution.
In Naples, they are dancing on the streets at the seaside.
In Naples, all the pizza is as good as they say.
In Naples, all the black men are selling awful white handbags to awful white tourists on the sides of the roads.
In Naples, the trains all have plastic seats like the ones from my primary school.
In Naples, the dogs are throwing fur in the air as they scratch all the fleas in their coats.
In Naples, there is washing strung in the streets and a woman throwing water from her balcony’s rails.

*

izzy

the animals are gone.

1. all remaining bonobos whisked away to a remote island on a schoolbus at night, forced to compete for survival or face certain death

2. black rhino horns last seen bobbing just above the barricade on the top level of a supermarket carpark. onlookers described the scene as a hail of bullets arcing over the barricades from the street met with no resistance

3. the hotel was evacuated before the rafters were lit with the mountain gorillas still up in the gods, shaking the beams as if they had leaves

4. the stormwater drains were flooded. along the coast, a small girl reported to her father that she had seen a big cat floating motionless in the waves. years later, the same girl found a saber tooth on the shore, drilled a hole in it and wore it as a necklace

5. when the tension finally boiled over and the gang wars began, every member of the hawksbill and leatherback turtle gang was found shot in the back on an abandoned plot between their territories. no investigation was launched. none of them had guns.

6. the famous beergarden overlooking the city centre features a centrepiece of a stuffed dodo riding a preserved quagga. there is some debate as to the authenticity of these taxidermied specimens, but the experts are convinced.

7. the bones of 57 Tasmanian tigers of varied sizes and ages have been used by a resourceful stay-at-home Dad to construct a chapel in the backyard of his suburban home.

8. every resident of Davison street owns a custom sea cow cloak. it’s no longer an option or bonus. it’s a necessity.

9. in a mysterious serious of hit-and-runs, every lollipop person across the city was wiped out within a week. the vehicle/s and person/s responsible have not been found.

the sky is a pale, shaken shade of blue.
it stays that way for years.

*

sarah

I am walking through Berlin on a gorgeous hot day, and everyone is eating icecream.
I am not eating icecream, because I am thinking about a tweet I just read from a reporter in Gaza, which said
‘I’ve seen some truly shocking scenes this morning. A man putting the remains of his two year old son into a shopping bag…’
and I am also thinking about a photo I saw of the plane that was shot down, before the news sites started pixellating the bodies,
and somehow, I don’t feel like icecream.
I feel like screaming, I suppose, but that rings somehow false and undeserved, because nobody I actually know has made the transition from man to meat, at least, not this morning, so I’m having to settle with just feeling sick.

I am twenty-six years old, which is thirteen times older than that boy in the shopping bag, and I am currently using some of that time he’ll never get to look at a dog.
It’s the sort of dog that you’d draw if you had to explain to one an alien, all lanky and bouncy and black-furred.
Because dogs can’t eat icecreams, someone is spraying it with a hose.
The dog fucking loves the hose.
It’s barking and leaping and trying to bite the water, and I am alternating between laughing at its infinite canine joy, and feeling guilty about laughing when the world is so fucked.

I am thinking about how in the midst of horror, people find a way to laugh, and how in the midst of happiness, people find a way to hate.

I am thinking about certainties and how we build them out of air so we have something to lean on in the nothingness.

I am thinking that I would like there to be a hotline that I could call to ask those niggling little questions, like
Should I eat that chicken
and Is that animal safe to pat
and There is a man behind me, should I ignore him or should I run or should I hit him, and if so, where and how hard
and How many more of my friends are going to jump off buildings
and Is it normal to wake up exactly half an hour after going to sleep panting oh god-oh-god-oh god because you just got a glimpse into the inexorable truth of your own death hurtling towards you like a brick wall in front of a freight train and for just one second you understood what that meant and it scared the fucking shit out of you and is it also normal that it’s happening more and more and I’m afraid to sleep alone, and –
Does my butt look big in this?
(The answer to that last one is usually yes)

I am thinking about stone and how it seems to hold history in a way that no other substance does.
I am thinking about loss and being lost and feeling scared and growing up and how the answers aren’t just hard, they don’t exist.
I am thinking about blood and how it never looks quite real.
I am thinking about the news and I am thinking about fear and I am thinking about ice cream.
And the sweat slides off me like snow.

*

izzy

9.
Sumatran tigers have replaced all the lollipop people on the southern coast
it happened overnight – no one’s entirely sure how –
but things have never been better
some people credit it to the government, some to the opposition,
others feel it’s more of a grass roots movement kind of thing
either way, everyone’s in agreement that it was a brilliant idea

*

sarah

Maraschino cherry noses bob against the window pane, smearing grimy squiggles across the glass. The heat quickens. The dog is grumbling underfoot, half hound, half cushion, and trending ever more towards the latter. Sun blares. The children press fat patty-cake hands into each others’ shoulders, straining to see, sweating plump droplets to spoil the petunias with too much salt.

*

izzy

8.
every house on Davison street has a sea cow in their bathtub
it’s no longer an option or a bonus
it’s become necessity
they wipe the sweat off your brow when you come home from work
they sing the kids to sleep
they hold you when you weep

*

sarah

These suitcases under my eyes are full of bruisey dark blood
I can feel them drooping a little deeper every day
and I’m sure that with the simple administration of a tiny razor slice
I’d finally be ready to travel light – wallet, toothbrush, a condom in case
I can’t shave my legs without my hands starting to twitch

*

izzy

7.
the roof of the garden shed is sinking
beams bowing under the weight of each litter
but there’s nothing to be done

she gives you a good ol’ growl every time you get close
there’s no way to get em down from there
just gotta keep adding support beams from the bottom
make sure there’s something soft to land on when the roof finally gives way

her striped flanks shivering, snout raised from the roof
a new litter bouncing around up there every day
– phenomenal woman –
this Tasmanian tiger just won’t stop giving birth

*

sarah

hey gurl I sure do like the way your face hits your neck
just like bam, out of nowhere
not like those bitches with those tapering jawlines
nah, yours is just like face face face neck aw yiss
I just like a little simplicity in my life is all I’m sayin

*

izzy

6.
sweartogod I saw a dodo riding on a quagga’s back
right down on the left bank of the river
just strolling along, stopped for a little sip, a little refreshment
stood there mouth widerightopen hanging open like a broken ventriloquist doll
just watchenem walk, just watchenem strut along the cobbles, down the concrete
through that scrub right over there and way on out into the city block
dodo and a quagga
right here
right in the middle of the city
foraging through leftover McDonald’s and KFC

*

sarah

the world is old here
tired and desperate and full of savagery
with the ends of the bell curves huddled together in the smoke
throwing themselves into the shuddering sound
of vast machines chewing their own teeth

*

izzy

5.
the hawksbill and leatherback turtles have formed rival gangs
on the north and south sides of town
there’s something a bit lopsided about ‘northside-southside rivalry’
they find themselves constantly wishing there was a more natural east-west division in this city
but they’ve patched their jackets and sharpened their beaks just the same

*

sarah

The air smells of elephant shit and incense, hot oil, dust and sweat. The audience is dripping, fanning themselves feebly. All the oxygen in the tent is locked inside bodies which slump as they hold their breaths, waiting. The light has an oily electric sheen. The lions yawn. The children shiver. The spotlights flare. The drums begin.

*

izzy

4.
there is a saber-toothed tiger trapped in the stormwater drains
it’s been mewling for days
walking from suburb to suburb underneath the city
living off scraps, crying for sunlight

no one knows how to get it out

*

sarah

it was too frightening on land
the skies were no longer safe
so we took to the seas
so far down that no radar could reach us
no missiles or torpedos or bullets or tanks
just seven dark miles of deep silent ocean
folded over us like billions of blankets
we took lanterns and crackers
thousands of bonsai trees
our favourite pairs of polar fleece socks
and in the guts of the world
where our words had run out

*

izzy

3.
the mountain gorillas are hiding out in the rafters of a four-star hotel, preening each other, touching cheeks, gazing into each others’ soft brown eyes.
occasionally, one lumbers down from its perch to crush a hotel patron with a hug to lift their sadness.
the foyer smells like musk and moss, and the hotel has started renting camping lots in the carpark for all the sad people queuing to be hugged.

*

sarah

That man
that man wants to take the synagogue of my mother
and her mother, and her mother before her
of my father and grand, grand fathers
and kind, and good, and true
and on the day that we are all gone, he wants to open it wide
and call it a museum to an extinct race

but that man has no mind for the desperation of rage
that man is of steel, and I am of flesh
and this wild young jewess, this unvenerated woman
this stick-starved little girl will make him a golem

There is no water in these streets any more
but there is plenty of blood, and this clay will burn red
like the sun in the east, like the coming of day
these witch-woman’s hands will knead up the earth
and sew in the ferocity that runs in our veins
I will carve out the shape of a giant stone woman
I will fold in the truth that I keep between my legs
and I will write out the name of the god that I love
and place it in her mouth, and kiss her clay lips
and I tell her that she is holy, a daughter of god

And as she blazes to life, I will ride on her back
for every soft weeping one of us, for every one they called sow
every one that they beat, every one that they shot
for those who fell to the crusaders, the Christians, the Cossacks
every one of my people who cried out to my lord as they died

and we will march to that man
we will march through this guttering nightmare of hatred
with the terrible, glorious god-light of day
and as the sunrise comes roaring, this blood-rusted stone soldier
will clap her hands together, and the whole world will pray

*