izzy

I’m standing out the front of the bank with one hand on the trigger and one hand in the air.
Look back, and you – caught in the doorway, grinning like an idiot, dribbling fat wads of cash that slap like fat fish onto the marble doorstep. Half expecting you to throw your arms up high, spray money down these steps and scream ‘Fuck capitalism! Fuck the patriarchy!’, your eyes glinting like diamonds, you look a million bucks babe

BANG.

Blare of sirens, hot-footing it down the street you right there, you right there behind me, like I can feel your breath on my neck, feel hands run over my belly one down between my legs, one up to grip my chest. Like I can already taste your sweat on my tongue.

BANG.

Money to burn babe, money to lie on, money to throw out our revved-up, top-down chariot. Just you and me babe. Just you and and the road babe. Sky’s the limit.

blank.

*

sarah

I am my own outrageous little ecosystem.
Here are the storm clouds puffing out of my ears.
Here are the tides rolling sand across my forehead.
Here are the ferns creeping softly through my sinuses.
And lo, here comes the summer sweat, lo, here comes the rain.

*

izzy

She can dive a little deeper every time until finally she can see the rooftops, finally feel her hands run over pitted concrete and avoiding the gaping glass teeth. One floor at a time, she clears the buildings out, dizzied by the depth, skin puckered and peeling when she bursts back to the surface. She wonders if she will ever have children. She wonders if they will scavenge slowly like she does, bit by bit, or if they will learn to breathe this water and soak the salt into their skin. She wonders if they will start to call the water home instead of missing the rutted rocks and the sand and the dirt of the land like she does. If they will catch fish between their teeth, ripping at them with webbed hands. If they will recede back to some rougher primordial state. If they will love this rolling water globe.

*

sarah

This was the day she got home early and cried tracks in the dust on her face, and liked them so much that she varnished her cheeks and kept them as exhibitions of her grief.

*

izzy

You can’t see me, so don’t try
I’m lost in the undergrowth now
growing creepers up my arms
flowers out my ears –
you don’t know?
I was lost down here so long ago
rolled in the dirt and the undergrowth
helped into earth with a loving hand
that now I’ve forgotten how to stand

*

sarah

Tell me a story. Once upon a time.
Once upon a time there was a monkey called Geoff. And Geoff was the CEO of an enormous multinational monkey corporation called ‘Geoff’s Bananas.’ And they basically were involved with importing bananas. There was a little bit of diversification into, into, um, other sorts of – wait for it – monkey business, but mostly they just imported bananas. But! They had a lot of structural problems and their bottom line was not very healthy – basically, Geoff was eating all the bananas, and that was really affecting their bottom line. Eventually they went into receivership and they had to liquidate all their bananas in a big blender and they made a smoothie out of them. They liquidated their assets and made them into a smoothie. And that’s the end of the story.
What a good story.

*

izzy

He woke to feel a cold drip falling steadily on his forehead. Right in the centre. Smashing up his chakras. Holding his frontal lobe to ransom, forcing his eyes to blink and his cheeks to wince every time the next blow feel. That, and the smell – acidic and fecund, ripe overflowing like sickly Vermouth. His tie was choking him, but he couldn’t move his hands. He knew they wanted answers but he didn’t understand, so he closed his eyes and wailed, he closed his eyes and cried. He closed his eyes and shut his mouth and asked the darkness why.

*

sarah

When the hurricane comes
it will be cut-glass and golden

belching life into the dry cracked places
an avalanche of terrible fecundity

the insects will flourish, naturally
fucking and birthing and dying, teeming

the bloated men and women will float on by
with shiny blind joy in their maggoty, bigoted eyes

*

izzy

Su-su-su suppose there was an easy way to fix this
To scratch and drop and fade and remix this
Suppose there was a way to make history her story
To unburn your fingerprints, to dig out some glory
Drop this like it’s hot, too hot to touch
Stop pretending a wink and a nod is enough

*

sarah

Ha! Ha! I can punch chicken dinner boxes and feel like a hero!
I can karate kick pot plants until they shatter and I don’t even bleed!
I am the steel bodied boy with the titanium smile!

*

izzy

her stomach sank when she heard the news
right down through her pelvis and into her knees
her chest flipped open like a Jumping Jack box
and her legs pooled in puddles, wetting her socks

*

sarah

The highlighters make her feel safe.
She uncaps the yellow one and glides it over the important things.
She considers the pink one but doesn’t like how it bleeds ink. The blue one is too dark. The green is ugly, but it comforts her, having them all laid out in perfect neon lines, near her hand if she needs them.
She highlights the word ‘love.’ She highlights the word ‘fast.’ She highlights the teeth of the author in the dust cover jacket photo. She feels a bit mean and highlights the whole face, and gives it a halo for good measure. She highlights the fridge magnet that says ‘Yeah!’ She highlights the best before date on the milk in the fridge. She highlights the white spot on the tail of the cat. She highlights the drool spot on her pillow. She highlights the toothpaste. She highlights the light bulb.
By the time she’s done, she’s living in perfect chemical sunshine.

*

izzy

If I drew you, I would draw a mountaintop,
breathtaking and treacherous and fucking hard to reach

*

sarah

everything seems a little less real than tomorrow, she thinks
as she irons her hair along with her shirt
flat out on the scorch-marked ironing board

there is nothing to prove that there was ever a yesterday, she thinks
scoring her sandwiches with the flat of the knife
but not quite cutting them all the way through

I am a hologram lost in a synapse, she thinks
and paints lipstick on her eyelids
and mascara on her teeth

*

izzy

watch as the rain slowly paints the road
from dusty grey to melting, slick and black
slide eyes along it like snakes like streams
like the underside of a soft palm,
hold the air to you like its breath
might be able to soothe your flailing chest
lick the gum leaves like a lover’s tongue
grip fistfuls of dirt like swollen sheets

*

sarah

The fog doesn’t fuck around up here. Falls on the road like a heap of dirt, cuts out everything between here and here, so you drive at a crawl and watch ghostly trees and rubbish bins loom out of the mist. The birds all go quiet. The people crowd at the windows of the bakeries and bars and stare at the world all gone.

*

izzy

When her body compacted into a neat little cube she knew she would always be safe from having to hold on to anything else. Six little armadillo panels, jutting out of her like bones. People flocked to look at her, and she gazed back benevolently, knowing they couldn’t hurt her.

*

sarah

Dylan has brought home a girl called Candy and he can’t quite believe what is happening to him. He’s splayed stupidly on his bed with his sneakers not quite touching the floor and his mouth half open. He’s sitting on his hands so he doesn’t do anything stupid with them, and he’s trying to will his erection to tuck itself into the waistband of his jeans. Candy (how the fuck is that her real name?) is running her fingertips along the top of his bookshelf with her head tilted to the side so she can read the book spines. He is panicking about the books. He hopes she can’t tell that his copy of Infinite Jest has no cracking on the spine, and thus hasn’t been read at all. He also hopes she can’t tell that his copy of Seven Little Australians has a shitload of cracking on the spine, as well as a lot of warped pages from where he’s cried on them, which he does every time he reads it, which is more often than he’d be willing to admit to anyone. He reckons that some girls would find it sweet and pro-feminist of him that he cries over books about teenage girls in early outback Australia, but he doesn’t reckon that Candy is one of those girls. Candy is chewing her bottom lip in the most maddeningly attractive way. He didn’t think that girls outside of porn and Hollywood films even did that. He inhales nervously and gets a whiff of her perfume, which doesn’t smell like candy at all, but like some sort of festival of burning wood and greenery. Candy smells like a bushfire and it’s making his mouth dry. She gets to the end of the line of books and turns to him and smiles out of the left side of her lips. He tries to smile back but his mouth starts shaking so he does this sort of weird awkward chuckle and feels his ears get hot. He has never heard silence as complete as the one in his bedroom right now. He can hear his heart. He wonders whether she can hear it. He swallows even though there’s nothing to swallow, and she must be able to hear the weird air bubble gurgle that goes sliding down his throat. She locks eyes with him, doesn’t even blink, and slowly pushes her hand into the pocket of her jeans. His brain has totally stopped functioning now, except to roar blood into his ears and his cock. Especially his cock. She draws out her phone, slides her thumb across the screen, swirls it around a few times and then puts it on the bookshelf. As she pulls her hand away, it starts playing music, something he almost recognises – something that was daggy in the 90s but is cool now, all jangly guitar and singers who can’t really sing, and he’s furrowing his brow, trying to remember the band name when suddenly she’s all over him, straddling his hips with her arms round his shoulders and her nose against his, and the bushfire blazing and her lips soft and supple and for a second it’s just her eyes and his, dark diamond twinkles, and then he melts and he’s lost in her kisses.

*

izzy

Siri says:
Stuart Little helps long-lost hung Gary and painting come home

*

sarah

The doctor presses a camera down her throat and shows her a video of her vocal folds rippling. She watches, transfixed, as the soft wet vaginal tissue slaps back and forth. She feels herself getting wet and feels dirty, ashamed. She hums when he says to and those membranous slivers of pink shudder with pleasure and her cheeks get flushed. Say ah, he says, and she’s guttural and heady and sliding a little down the seat. Say oh, he says, and her breath catches and she’s shaking all over, gripping the chair legs and watching the glistening slow-waving meat in her mouth. Now cough, he says, and she comes instead.

*