izzy

The babies rolled toward the water from the sand, fat grains still dripping out of the bouncy one’s mouth. No harm in eating sand. It just churns right through them like mortar. They burbled and hiccuped to each other as they rolled, gaining momentum, feeling the wash of the shallows and giggling as it tickled their marshmallow chins. Glinting wavelets were already cradling them and handing them on to the big waves to be rocked before the adults noticed. Flying sun hats, a burst bottle of sunscreen dribbling onto the beach and the rip of a sarong tripped down the beach, kicking sand buckets, shovels and brine. It was inconceivable they could have rolled that far on their own, and yet there they were. The wind perhaps. One toppled and grabbed the other for support. The babies burped and smiled, remembering the swell of the sea. How in the water finally they could breathe again, finally they could see.

*

sarah

The day we met, I reeked of blood. Straight from the kill floor to the supermarket aisle with no time in between to change. Not that you’d know to look at me – looking like a cricket umpire, I was, all snowy white from top to toe. You see the blood better that way. And I’m standing at the deli counter, giving shit to the guy arranging the steaks, who left the roar of the cows and the hoses at my side in exchange for these Hallmark card slabs of meat, and I notice this woman. She’s standing way too close to me, just behind my right shoulder, dark hair pulled back like she had to do it in a hurry, and she’s smelling me. I know that way of smelling, the long, shallow inhale to make it seem like you’re not doing it. I know it from people on the bus, trying to figure out what I stink of. I know it from the tellers at the bank, and the laundromat patrons and the McDonalds queue in peak hour. And it pisses me off, that sniff like a sneer, so I turn around and I look her full in the face. And she goes totally still and stares at me and she knows I know. And we just stand there, with our eyes bouncing off each other for a few seconds, and she doesn’t apologise like I think she’s going to, or slink away like a sad old dog. She opens her mouth, and really quiet and firm, she says ‘You smell like my dad did.’ And we just hold it, air rippling between us. We don’t say a word, we just turn and walk to the self serve checkout, and for once I don’t fuck it up and have to wave over an employee to help, we just put our heads down and pack our plastic bags and stride on out and we go back to her place and fuck like all we are is meat.

*

izzy

Mae stands on the balcony because she doesn’t know where else to be. Stretching her arms out slightly to her sides, she leans lightly on the bannister, trying to look casual and calm as she stares over Jimmy’s head to the brown-bricked terraces across the road. The sun is as close as it’s going to get to glaring in Dumbarton. She is wearing her striped summer tunic, hair rolled back from her eyes. This is the dress in which Jimmy will put his hand on the back of her neck and steer her up or down the stairs. He will undo her hair from their rolls just to irritate her, and she will leave the mousy strands hanging because there’s no point fighting a losing battle. Mae hears a click from beneath her and realises she has been fading into the cracks between the bricks in the house across the street. Jimmy holds his brand new toy aloft, grinning, “one for the albums!” Neither of them know the photograph will come out the milky brown of river water, bleached and overexposed by summer sun.

*

sarah

I blunted my incisors for you
Filed my claws back into my hands
Forced my fierce thighs into nude nylon tights
Taught my howling mouth to simper and smile
You promised me wildness like I’d never known
And like a bitch on heat, I believed you
But this world you wrought is a mockery
Of TV dinners and foot massages
And nights caged in by your sausage-soft arms
Through a crack in the curtain I can see the moon
And she’s burning and bright and baying for blood
This lukewarm love has no bite to match mine

*

izzy

The water’s rising. Ten days from now, we’ll be 10 feet under. Nobody was worried about this yesterday. No one was worried last year. Most people didn’t believe it was actually going to happen. Some people thought that underwater suburbs in the cities would be a good thing. A tourist destination. An amusement park. A ghost town. A better place for the ghettos. Finally anyone who wanted to could have a 9 bedroom California bungalow looking at the sea. Some of us are going down to meet the water. To let it rush over us and erase our evolution. We don’t want to live in a world that saw this coming and did nothing.

*

sarah

So this is how it feels to mistrust your own home
To see the tendrils of fear come sweet-voiced snaking
Not a fist, but a breath, a chill on the wind
When the shouting stops, and the dogs go quiet
And the sentinels pull blankets tight about their shoulders

*

izzy

stubbornly rooted in the family plot, you stand
amongst the labyrinth of wild blackberries
the quiet clearings held together by languid gums
and the gullies burbling like giggling children

sawtooth chewing through wet wood
breaking bark and spitting out the pulp
each log thumping to the ground a bruised fist
we will make this house, we will make it a home

build some wax wings with the twigs for tinder
take flight, forget the smell of the undergrowth
or stay. fold the light up in the banksia when it flowers
you are untranslatable to the cold and weak sunlight.

*

sarah

The wind blows a little sweeter where he fell
Seventeen years from the cradle to the mud
Where the scar-crossed earth stood witness
To see him caught in the chest as he ran
With his arms out and his eyes wide
Looking for all the world like he’d just seen his sweetheart
Standing in her best white dress just over the hill
And a spot of red bloomed in his breast pocket
As though his heart had burst for the love of her
And his mouth flew open in shock, or hope, or delight
And he toppled into the muck as though it were her arms

*

izzy

the walls are peeling back
scrubbing themselves off this skin
turning back to plastered yellow

poured back to standing like syrup
molten and warm and sickly sweet
blood-licked lips chattering morning’s heat

*

sarah

You were a tiny life, and yours was a tiny death
But it was not for nothing that you were held as you went
And swaddled in blankets, tucked in safe and warm
Your loss all the sweeter for being so small

*

izzy

You cut the socks off your feet because you can’t do this any more. You don’t want your toes to be muffled, your ankles stifled. You walk out onto the street, leaving the door ajar, leaving your housemate gaping with toast falling out of their mouth and you follow the footpath. The sun kisses the back of your neck to tell you to keep going. Little granules of asphalt prick the bottom of your feet but it doesn’t really hurt that much, actually it feels kind of good. By the time you reach the point of the city where the footpaths are intermittent, the soles of your feet are cut up and weeping, but you don’t mind, you just keep on walking. These are the coals you have to walk over, and honestly it’s just not that bad. By the time there are no footpaths, the soles of your feet are numb and the tops of your feet are feeling the breeze and kissing the sun back. When you walk into a thick patch of trees, you know you will not be walking back. You take off each item of clothing and carefully fold it, leave the small pile under a tree either as an offering or a purge – you’re not entirely sure. Your feet make the twigs and crisp leaves crackle as you plunge in. This is what it feels like – plunging, or diving, submerging. We didn’t crawl onto dry land just to build freeways.

*

sarah

Bass in my guts like a cat in a sack
The air thick with sweet sharp smoke
Pot and cloves and pine
There’s a girl with a dark doily top
And dip-dyed blonde hair
Who looks so much like her up there, on top of the world
I wonder if whoever is casting this catastrophe
Runs out of new faces now and then
Doubles up here and there
Tosses the same shapes across the globe
Thinking that nobody will ever notice
Well, I did.
And I’m telling you right now, I’ll be writing to complain.

*

izzy

one thousand wolves leapt into the air at the same time
one thousand spines arching
one thousand tails wagging
two thousand eyes glinting back at the moon
four thousand legs running so hard and fast they might just break through the stratosphere

*

sarah

When they kissed their teeth collided
And their glasses crashed together
And their noses dragged across their cheeks
And their hands got caught in each other’s knotted hair
And they got their breathing all out of whack
And they surfaced, swallowing spit
Stared at each other for a tense moment or two
And burst into laughter
And dived straight back in

*

izzy

pressing down on the air above the sheets
a body floating two feet above the bed

the springs still creak as it rolls over
either the ceiling is falling down to meet it
or this body is rising

*

sarah

Ah help me help me
I’ve climbed so damn high now
And I can’t bear to look down
Grasping my koala hands on the ladder
Wood grain seeping into my fingertips
I am shattered and spread out to dry
These useless thighs are good for nothing but meat
And they are trembling
Can’t catch my breath with a butterfly net
Can’t anchor my actions any more
The dim dying day spits out its embers
And I am clutching this handrail
Like the hand of a lover through a hurricane
Nothing in this world would tempt me higher
Can’t bear the thought of climbing down
Just the thought of the fall is killing me
We’ll have to go through it
We’ll have to go through it

*

izzy

deafening roar as the water thumps down rock
it looks like the clouds are exploding into this rush
softening the rock pace, pummelling it in the flow
of angel tears or maybe just runoff and rainfall

the clutch of sky staring down at the constant force
of light and sound, of heaven crumbling to its knees
water and gravity connected and kinetic and rumbling
or the drop between your throat and your navel

*

sarah

These are the tender times, my friends
Turn the lamps down low and dog-ear your picture books
Make a nest in your stomach for the cat to come lie in
And leave the window open for the lovers in the night

*

izzy

The woman who lives above me doesn’t sleep either. I hear her talking to someone at 5 in the morning. She’s on the phone I guess because I can’t hear anyone replying. Just the muffled sound of her speaking, then silence, then the creak of a floorboard, then her speaking again. This woman walks around her bedroom a lot as she speaks. I follow her path with my eyes and the light from breaking dawn flickering across the ceiling.

*

sarah

I can dance like a science experiment
About how many weird shapes one person can make
In four minutes and fifty-eight seconds

*