izzy

sometimes, I wish we were manatees
you make me feel like doing naked star jumps
I get why people say ‘love is like a drug’
I never sleep or
I sleep all the time because I am tired out
from all this feeling

right now it feels like I am filled with a million helium balloons
and I want to make a high-pitched happy sonar noise, like
eeeeeeee eeeeeeee eeeeeeee eeeeeeee eeeeeeee

*

sarah

you are carved in the lamplight
stone and ivory and shimmering bronze
and I am fearful of approaching you

I trace in my skull the curve of your breast
your hip-bone sentinels, the cove in between
you are holy and pagan and sacred and sin

you stir in the quivering, hot blended air
and a trickle of sweat draws a line down your chest
cleaves you in two, like a butterflied lamb

you beckon me over and I stumble in my haste
to kneel at your temple
and press a finger inside

*

izzy

somebody go
tell the world it’s on fire

*

sarah

I ogle you
there’s no other way of putting it
I ogle you through a pair of perfect champagne goggles
and drape myself against the balustrade lustily,
fustily, reeking of damp in my wool blend cardigan
you run a hand through your Ken Doll raked hair
and wipe it carefully on the leg of your pants
and there’s a chance, I would wager
that we’d get past the pleasantries
and fall into bed with a fumble of hands
but I’m jumbling words in an alcohol haze
and I’m dazed by the sparkle of cigarette lighters
raised in the air like a toast to the night
so I just keep on ogling you

*

izzy

say something like, “run a mile”
say, “watch yourself”
say, “look where you’re going”

say something like, “this could never happen to me”

*

sarah

The mist paws at the glass, draws away, comes back kissing. I breathe onto the window and draw a smiley face for it to love. My breath grows heavy, the water collects and the smiley face eyes start crying. The mouth grows strings of beaded rain. The car heater rattles whenever we turn corners. Freeway exit ramps grate. Roundabouts are intolerable. We sit in the sort of sharded silence caused by too many teeth being grated, too many jaws held tensely, too much breath let out too fast. The indicator ticks dully. A truck shoots a wave of dirt and water past us and the lights of the highway turn to fat round flecks. The dark is coming quick now, and we are hurrying, scurrying across the big, flat Australian nothing.

*

izzy

how warm all the shop windows look
glowing and spilling all over the pavement
the mannequins reclining
perfect smooth skin
pineapple and apple bikini prints
turning their plastic limbs with a wink
while we wither and chill outside

*

sarah

Two women in their 50s on the Frankston line into Flinders Street, Monday, 9:22 am:

A: The only thing that I do low fat is my yoghurt. Oh, and I do diet jelly on Tuesdays.
B: Oh, that’s nice. That’s a nice refreshing treat.
(Pause)
B: You still doing Pilates?
A: On Tuesdays.
B: Oh, good on you. My teacher talks a lot. But she’s got this really calm voice. Really calm.
(Pause)
B: You see, no-one at work’s noticed. No-one’s said anything. Meanwhile, I’ve gone down in my clothes, you know! My sister’s noticed. And you. But nobody at work.
(Pause).
B: So, is your niece still with her husband?

*

izzy

Quentin Tarantino wakes feverishly, looking for something to hold onto. He is skewed across the basement couch, sandwiched by a blow-up Nicki Minaj doll and a Vulcan BF50 nerf gun. His suit is crumpled. He wipes saliva from the corner of his mouth and pushes his hair off his forehead. Sunlight creeps through a chink in the curtain and he squints at it with swollen eyes. The birds are at it again. He staggers to the balcony, rips open the door and yells some abuse over the fence. Alan Ball mustn’t be home, because he doesn’t come out to defend his squawking brethren. Tarantino slams the balcony door, and the glass shatters. The noise of the exotic birds eating, fucking, chattering saunters in. The doorway stands open like a gaping jaw and the noise can’t be filtered out. Out, damn spot. Tarantino sits bowed over an enormous panelled wooden desk with his forehead on the cool desktop, and cries. His sobs mingle with the sonic refuse of the feathered jerks next door. He will not write today. He will not write tomorrow. The sound of the birds has become his only reality.

*

sarah

We winter inside our doona cocoon. Spiders of ice snaking across the fitted sheet. It’s coming out at the corners. It’s always coming out at the corners. The mattress won’t be shackled by a faded brown fitted sheet marked with cum stains and period leaks. I sigh in your arms.
Dear I, I say.
Dear I?
It’s like dear me, except I used the wrong pronoun.
You laugh for a full minutes, fall silent and then start hooting again. You make me write it down. I do not think that I am funny, and so making you laugh fills up my insides. I wonder how big comedians must feel when they feel the weight of ten thousand laughs hit their stomach at once. They must feel like titans.

*

izzy

I registered to become an organ donor because it seems like a good idea. It seems like this is one of those things you can do and feel like ‘I am an adult now’. It was easy, I just filled out a form online. There is an added benefit in that it somewhat assuages my fear of dying. I am ok with the idea of my consciousness ending. I am ok with the idea of spending the rest of eternity in hell or eternal recurrence. The idea of my physical body disintegrating, decomposing in a slow process to turn back into dirt both comforts and terrifies me. The idea of my heart beating in someone else’s chest after I am dead makes me feel safe. I checked every box except for donating my eye tissue. I know that people probably really need eye tissue, and I feel bad. I don’t like the idea of someone having my eyes. Them seeing the world through my eyes is kind of cool. Seeing is important. I love being able to see the world. But my eyes feel very personal. These squishy balls of fluid windows to the soul whatever. It is more about someone looking into the miraculously no longer blind person’s eyes and my pupils staring back that scares me. I don’t even know if that’s how it works.

*

sarah

Postcard from the 21st century:
I keep finding new bits of innocence to lose.
Tonight, it was seeing performers from Australia’s only same-sex ballroom dancing studio. I cried watching them, because I’d never before realised how many lovers danced in their living rooms, but were still afraid to dance out of them.

*

izzy

Why is it that a heart feels so much like a fist? That a pump and a punch are so closely intertwined in our imaginings? Thrusting out of our ribcages; little spring-loaded boxing gloves.

*

sarah

I’ve got the most amazing magic trick
just close your eyes, count to fifty
and I’ll disappear forever!
You’re going to need to give me a coin
I’ll make that disappear, too.
Actually, while you’re at it, might as well be your wallet
maybe your car
and just for the purposes, of the trick,
maybe your wife, too
Are you ready?
Boy, this is going to blow your mind!
Okay, close your eyes
start counting
nice and slow
don’t peek, now
You’re going to get the surprise
of
your
life

*

izzy

life hack:
lungs repairing when you quit smoking is like levelling up. even when your body is wracked with horrible chesty coughs that come from the pit of you, you are winning.

*

sarah

I stood at the foot of a mountain and thought of
I stood on the sands of the ocean and thought of
I stood in the swamps of the south and thought of
The winds shrieked past my ears and I thought of
The cold gnashed at my nose and I thought of
The heat blistered my cheeks and I thought of
Those words I cannot shake
That voice I cannot run from
To the ends of the earth I will be haunted
‘Do you want to build a snowman?’

*

izzy

solving problems or how to eat toast painfully slowly

Break it into smaller pieces so you can see all of it laid out, compartmentalised. Make the pieces bite-sized – why not? Move the pieces around to see if they fit better in a different arrangement. You got this. Even though the whole is huge, each piece is tiny, inconsequential on its own.

*

sarah

Let’s get married in June
on a clifftop
in a gale
so that when great-aunt Wendy just topples off into the wind
we technically won’t have pushed her

*

izzy

Dearest one in the Lord,

I am the above named person. I am married to a former minister,
We were married for eleven years without a child . He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days .
When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $5.5 Million ( five hundred ) Deposited in a Bank here .
Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem . The one that disturbs me most is my H.B.P high blood pressure sickness .

Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to individual or any organization that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein .Please contact me for more details

Remain Blessed,

Mrs. Anns

*

sarah

something catches on the wind and drags me back
to the halls of the dementia ward where I volunteered as a teenager
massaged sad old hands
sat at the feet of the aged
played on the piano the same five songs, over and over
(demented ears always forget, the delight stays the same)
and I remember
the couple who had met between these sterile white walls
and who would sneak into a room and love each other
the nurses smiled the pitying smiles of the young discussing the old
and said ‘If you walk in on anything, just close the door and leave’
I shuddered then, to think of the dull loose skin
of that elderly embrace.
and I remember
Mary, still tall, in an adult diaper and nothing else
storming the common room, crying
‘I don’t want apples and oranges, I want justice!’
fighting the good fight with a wrecked cheese-holed brain.
and I remember
the woman, sane yet, into whose room I crept every Wednesday
bringing youth and awkward talk to that close-curtained air
I watched as she grew sicker, as the pain grew ever worse
she started giving me her shoes – the same size as mine
her clothes – too big. A piece of jewellery, here and there
donations from the dying to the living
one Wednesday, I didn’t go – some other errand of teenage life detained me
homework, perhaps. A movie. Some trifle.
when I returned the next week, she was gone
even as I asked whether she’d been moved, I knew she was dead
the small strange guilt of the child having broken a promise of hope
the nurses cooed over me, ‘Her family was here’
‘You’d have been in the way.’
the clothes were first to go – always too big and too fusty
the jewellery was lost somewhere, or given away
the shoes were the last to go
they walked a stage or two, strolled through some party or other
then were tossed in an op shop bin, twanging something within me as they went
and I realise
after all
that I can’t even remember her name

*