izzy

here is our house, here is our attic
the power’s still on but the TV’s gone static
playing iridescent over pallid plain faces
widescreen LED light that still carries the traces
of ezy channel shopping and talk show host grins
of prime time preachers who’ll sell you back your sins
our home sweet home walls are bursting with stuff
but our beady eyes know we don’t have enough.

*

sarah

as the plane presses into the obscene inky black
I imagine we are submarined in the deep dark sea
compressed like a packet of chips, hearing the whalesong
stretch in the heavy velvet sea, oldest and saddest song of the world
I imagine a leak springing just above the head of the stewardess
as she pours another cup of airplane coffee
the wet streaking her bun down like a tear
in the fabric of her face

*

izzy

One single pine, a lone pine, a pine standing by itself in a clearing, falls over and screams because it stubbed a root, crashes to the ground and lies there withering, looking at the broiling skies. The squirrels heard it and shuddered. The other pines heard it and tried to look away. Out of earshot, a hiker stops to rest a while, clutching her wrenching chest and wondering why it suddenly seems so much harder to breathe.

*

sarah

Death is shadowing me today
hanging on a rope bridge
busting out the big brass
tossing the clouds about like footballs
pressing his arm to my arm silky black smoky
laughing at the peat bog people gone leather-faced old football
skipping up my heart beat all trippy toed falling
hounding my side like a man made of cat

*

izzy

9:30am, iPhone alarm bells ring – a syncopated memory of brass on brass clanging an appeal to church bell peals, a symphony of wake the fuck up. Lola rolls out of bed holding her head and falls to the floor with a thud. She cries out as she picks herself up but realises no sound has escaped her tangled lips. Skipping downstairs to make herself breakfast, Lola sings soft to herself but all she hears are her footsteps and the creak of the stairs underfoot.

When her sister comes to the kitchen to brew morning tea, Lola standing with head in hands is the first thing she sees. The poor sod’s been talking too much and has lost her voice, though in reality it’s not just the talking but also the choice she made to be cruel and boring – sometimes it seemed vanity and volume were Lola’s only calling, but the day she woke up with a frog in her throat with no voice left to bicker or gloat served as a longer lasting lesson that it pays just as well to exchange stories and listen.

*

sarah

I heard words like hosanna thrown about in the arches
but they sounded to me like lizards on a rock
so I stood in the light from a stained glass window
and watched the dust motes dyed red and pink and gold
and thought that god was in the dust, not the light
and in the breaths in before the choir sang

*

izzy

shackled to the back of a beamer’s a bike
a bike just returned from a full-day hike,
huffing and puffing, it’s spokes tired out
this beastie mountain machine has sure got clout

she’s queen of the rough tracks,
a saint of the outback
but sadly today is not her day
cos someone strapped her to the back of the car the wrong way

*

sarah

Clytemnestra floats in the bedclothes
smelling the prison lying beside her, sleeping
and reeking of blood and sweat and sweet hot musk
which repels her most when she forgets herself
and is, for a moment, half tantalised.
she claws up her fingers and traces her nails
an inch from this throat, an inch from his eyes
and imagines the bellow he’d loose
if she let her hands fall

*

izzy

morning, for an undertaker:
half a grapefruit, with a sprinkle of sugar
one boiled egg
a small bowl of granola, toasted, with soy milk

no raspberries today.

black coffee, scalding
rise and walk to the sink,
drop a plate
stand and stare at the shattered floor
don a single yellow rubber glove, left hand
smoke
leaning out the window like a delinquent
like a single mother
smoke
don’t pick it up
take one more black coffee
have one more cigarette,
you deserve it.

the bodies can wait
they’re cold already.

*

sarah

The sky falls out big and blue from the bottom of the plane and the crop-dusted clouds take their place in the air. The sun hangs on a tether from the left hand wing and follows us west with the morning. The babies are sleeping in the same soft sweet dream and their mothers are clutching the armrests. Their nails tear tiny holes in the fabric. They sweat through their Dove silk deodorant. The pilot is singing a song to himself with the words that he finds in the cockpit instructions. The stewards and stewardesses are waltzing with food carts to the drone of the engines humming away. We loll 30,000 feet up and cross all our fingers and pray really sneaky so nobody sees.

*

izzy

Bk 2028
U.D.C. 1(42)

History of English Philosophy.

Sorley, W.R.

Macmillan
London.

1920

15/-

*

sarah

Calculate, to the nearest round number, the likelihood of you and me meeting in a bar somewhere and you liking the book that I’m reading and me not spilling food on my clothing and us kissing shyly under the stars and your knuckles red with the cold pressed into my hair and me on my tippy toes and our hearts both hammering like the clappers. Show your working.

*

izzy

this is my face when I’m just about to sneeze,
sitting on the floor of my room in the rathdowne street sharehouse I shared with an absentee, a pothead lawyer and a shut-in that reeked of weed and shook with blazing video-game guns
sitting on the floor of my room with my back against the door

this is my face looking up into the glare of the sun on the beach

this is my face when we were robbed in the debating grand final in year 11
and you agreed, we were robbed

this is my face after the first public showing of the first real, full-length play I wrote

this is my face when I realised that you hadn’t actually planned an ending or decided who the murderer was at my 13th birthday murder mystery party

this is my face after I asked you to leave when Mum was overseas
and you weren’t looking after us, we were looking after you

this is my face when you did a comedy sketch with our chocolate Easter rabbits for an hour before letting us eat them

this is my face when you told us the blair witch was in the isolated bush around the shack, then switched the torch off in the pitch dark and bolted off leaving my and Gree behind

this is my face when you told me the story of how you met Mum

this is my face when I stubbed my toe and you put your big hand around my foot and squeezed and squeezed to make it better

this is my face when you put on the Beatles number 1 CD again
and again
and again
until the generator died and we didn’t have any lights left

this is my face when I couldn’t stop laughing at your ridiculous lanky rock dance moves, the air guitar, the Elvis hip swing

this is my face, and even though it doesn’t really look like yours, sometimes I can see you in it.

*

sarah

The trains scrape across the tracks like possums screaming
The possums scream a little, just to join in
But their hearts aren’t in it
They’re too busy staring desperately at the sky, looking for the stars
Rubbing their muddy eyes, lost at sea while the gulls cackle and wheel
Remembering the constellations their mothers taught them
Big fat old possum, mister ringtail, the tree bark trail
Gone foggy now, gone quiet up there
Floating away in the big dome sky
Off to the next world, where they’re needed more and better

*

izzy

what does theatre mean to you?
being present.

have you ever wanted to die?
yes.

what does calmness feel like to you?
the bush and the sea.
I feel like I am at my calmest in the bush.
it’s a place to be still, a place to be quiet, a place to let go of –
oh, wait –
in Australia ‘bush’ also means the outdoors, forest, wilderness,
but I guess either one works.

what was your first impression of me?
you are bright.

why are you doing this?
I don’t know.

why are you doing this?
I wanted people to have a chance to be close to a stranger.

why are you doing this?
I want to be close to people.

when’s the right time to move in with a partner?
when you’re ready.
when you want to.
there are no hard and fast rules – it’s all bullshit.
either it feels right, or it doesn’t.
screw timelines.

should I move overseas?
yes.
take your new husband with you,
this is the greatest adventure.
you don’t have to be settled yet.
you can be each other’s portable homes.

should I quit my job?
yes.
if it’s not making you happy,
if it’s making you unhappy,
if you have the opportunity to do better
of course.
the city you love will always be there
to come home to if it doesn’t work out.

what is the biggest feeling you’ve ever felt?
the ocean falling on me.
when he died.

what is the hardest question someone asked you?
I was going to say ‘have you ever wanted to die’
but actually I think it was ‘do you really think people care if you tell the truth?’

*

sarah

sitting on the ground with the cigarette butts old chip packets balls of spit
I am ploughing through a tub of bad cold pasta and I am terrified
terrified of absolutely nothing, which is the worst thing to be terrified of
the only thing to fear is fear itself but fear is pretty fucking scary

*

izzy

this is the meat, tender and raw
this is the bone cracking

this is the skin lifting
this is the hair on the skin rising up

this is the tendon slackening
this is the fat dripping to the floor

*

sarah

we laughed, and in the laughter was the niggling panic
of knowing that our laughing would soon come to an end
we laughed the way that children cry –
all at once, in case they get distracted
and have to stop before they’re through
we laughed like socialites
pouring the champagne down the drain
before it goes flat and listless
laughing madly, before we forgot it all
and with it, all the heat of the room
and the breath of strangers
and the leaping hearts of a hundred chests
banging hard against their windows
we laughed for our old days, sitting on carpets
in tattered pyjamas, clutching at toys
mouthing the jokes we didn’t understand
and shining with bubblegum joy
we laughed for the cinemas and VHS tapes
worn down from rewinding in battered machines
we laughed so our brains would send clunky telegrams
with conflated descriptions of the times that we loved

*

izzy

01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01110011 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 00001101 00001010 01101100 01100001 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110010 01100001 01100011 01110100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01101101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101010 01100101 01110100 01110000 01100001 01100011 01101011 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01100101 01100101 01110100 00101110 00101110 00101110 00001101 00001010 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100111 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100101 01101101 01101111 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01111001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111

*

sarah

The train of being asleeps and being awakes chugs on by
And the crockery rattles on the corners
The theatre lights fall on his glasses like stars
I am holding hands with a stranger
I am singing about dying
I am seventeen thousand kilometres from home

*