izzy

this is one of those days where I’m standing here,
holding my life in little pieces in my hands
looking down at it and wondering
what is this – is it mine?

and David Bowie’s swinging on the chandelier
it’s snowing outside, fire tickling my neck
glasses chiming another hour, another hour
living with my breath punching the air

high-fiving just the thought of you,
saluting the stars, even though
they’re lost in the clouds
writing love letters to all my friends –

hold yourself like a lover, like china,
like you would a hammer that is just about to strike
spin around one more time and remember to
remember this is how Valentine’s should be

*

sarah

Tonight is a wolf moon
So I stand in the garden, smelling of beer and dirt
And spare a starry thought
For all the lovers tangled in each others’ hair
With their spit-slicked kisses
And bloodlust fucking
Tearing into miles of overripe flesh
Sucking each other like mandarins
Pith and piss and poetry.
Valentine’s Day is a day for people to say
‘I love you’, instead of ‘I want to devour you.’

*

izzy

even if I end up just another one of your train wrecks
I promise to be the most spectacular one

*

sarah

Note to self on getting old:
The more you sneer
The more you pout
The more you purse your lips in disdain
The more you tut and tetch
The sadder you will be.
The smaller you make your mouth,
The smaller you make your heart.
The years are not kind to the jaw.
The lips sew themselves shut
The teeth clamp together
The voice dries to a reedy harrumph
The shoulders curl upwards
The chest caves in
The pelvis folds up
The body collapses
And your bright, strong face full of laughter and love
Becomes a briny old ball of lemon-juice misery.
Let that not be your fate.
Let your lips be elastic and your eyes be bright
Let your cheeks be as buoyant as helium balloons
Let your arms be ever lifted and your voice be a shout
Crying ‘Let today be forever and the night be my lover
And the world full of nonsense and joy.’

*

izzy

I spilt milk down my neck –
that’s what you get for drinking from the carton
owl-eyed and tongue-tied at 4am
breathing smoke out the window
sausage-rolled in the covers for warmth.

I spent a good part of today thinking about apocalypse
trying to construct an argument as to why I
would be an asset at the end of the world
for my honours class assignment, I’m pretty sure
this is how to adult.

*

sarah

We roll on through this hazy, hot land
As it lolls innocuously in a bushfire haze
We track the battles fought against its nothingness
The bitumen scars, the power line bondage
The seething green signs pointing their accusations:
Mount Misery, Mount Disappointment, Wail
Centuries of men throwing down their maps
And scrawling desperate, tearful vengeance
Across the papery insouciance in their hands
As the scrub chuckles its glorious indifference.
You may love a sunburnt country, Dorothea
But it doesn’t give a fuck about you.

*

izzy

it snowed today and I was surprised
at how easily I took it in stride
with only a mild sense of excitement
sometimes it’s hard to really be immersed
when you’re just peering out the window

it wasn’t until I was walking home at 4am
flecks of white catching on my coat
that I really looked up with wonder
felt the cold on my cheeks, my tongue
and raised my arms to draw it in

*

sarah

I’ll tell you a joke: we’re all going to die, and –
Damnit, I always forget the punchline.

*

izzy

sometimes I think of falling in love
as being like people running towards each other
from really far away, pelting headlong towards
that tiny little dot growing on the horizon

and the closer they get, the more they can see
maybe they start running faster, urgently,
maybe they slow down, or maybe one of them stops
and eventually, both of them do

maybe a metre apart, where they can get a really good look
at all of the other person, from top to bottom
maybe with their foreheads pressed together,
hands entwined and chests touching

or maybe they are twenty metres away,
tracing the outline of the other person,
just noticing the colour of their shirt
and the flash of their teeth – smiling I think?

some people plant themselves right there,
decide they like the view, or stop looking and sit
some people step forward again, slowly
a lot of the time things happen that push them back
and they start to step backwards

sometimes something happens to make a person turn
and run furiously in the opposite direction
until maybe they bump into someone else
or they just keep running
to an empty horizon

*

sarah

I am lying on a massage bed, stomach-side down
In a shopping centre in Ivanhoe, with no door to the salon
So I can hear the grand symphony of Coles checkout beeps
Kids squalling in the aisles, trolleys bumper-car-ing about
With my head squashed unnervingly into a vinyl sphincter
And a woman beating my back with her rolling pin forearm
Pushing my skin into the caves under my shoulder blades
Where there is, frankly, not nearly enough storage space
She batters my buttocks with the tips of her elbows
My toes curl under, my breath turns ragged
She pinches and slaps her way around my arms
Tweaking the nerve that sets off my funny bone
Splinters of pain rocketing into my palms
And there, with her hands so close to holding mine
I feel five years old again, wearing my big pink glasses
Putting my goggles over the top, to thwart the kids who call me four eyes
‘I’m six eyes, now!’ I say, and they snarl like wild dogs.
I am five years old in this big old round body
Looking through a rabbit hole at a pair of sandaled shoes.
And lying here, tormented by those ruthless hard hands
As they charter a path up my fast bruising spine
And the Chinese-burn sting of my finger-clamped flesh
I am holding my breath so she can’t feel me cry.

*

izzy

there is no walking anymore
there is only running
or stopping

you can run to get to where you’re going
directly to the place you need to be,
no hesitation, no pussy-footing

or you can stop if you need to throw your arms up
to pull the sky around you
or hold the light up in your eyes with wonder

*

sarah

4am and a gale is howling like a bitch old stray dog
the stone lions by my window remember what it is to roar
this is a night for never-be-seen-agains
for the threads between worlds to grow thin
this is a night for being swallowed by the wind

*

izzy

eyes lined like a teenage goth because
I love it and
I want to play that Icona Pop song
just to prove it

what’s the name for this intense desire
to be kissed?
does it make a difference if I can’t see your lips?

we can dance each other round the living room,
pull the waves between us too because
why not?

these oceans our hangers-on, our third wheels –
we’ll dip like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire
I am jumping higher than you’ve ever seen me go

this is called making peace with the clouds

*

sarah

People I went to school with are getting married
Walking down aisles on their fathers’ arms
Pursued by misty-eyed sniffling from the pews
Angelic and powdered in swathes of white fabric.
People I know are turning their friends to butter
Melting in the face of their first-dance love
Moving the guests to groping under the tablecloth
With fingers still greasy with the meaty main course.
People whose faces I see only on Facebook
Are throwing out their condoms
And buying houses and dogs and cars and fancy blenders
And painting the smallest room yellow, for safety.
Today, I photographed myself with my tits out
And sent the photo to people I used to fuck.
Which is some small achievement, I suppose.

*

izzy

it’s funny how they call it ‘flying’
when you’re actually just pelting along on solid earth
you could not be more tied to the ground
this is perpendicular warfare,
this is the surface you are moving over,
owning, reinventing, destroying

cheeks like razors clanging against steel air
eyes watering and sparkling with piss-weak sun
snot pouring down face, whipped away or plastered down slick

your lungs are screaming, ‘YEAH AIR,
YEAH AIR, GET IN ME’
your legs are burning, ‘ROAD,
I OWN YOU, I OWN YOU ROAD’

and the hills bow down
and the trees shower confetti leaves
and you arrive as a pile of quivering flesh
triumphant

*

sarah

There is a story in my family
Told to me my by father
Which goes: there was once a man
Who was your great-grandfather
Who lived in Lithuania.
And one day, he was told
That the Tsar in Russia needed troops
To help fight the revolution
Lithuania sent its sons
Victory was expected
And so your great-grandfather
Kissed his wife and children
And marched off to battle.
The revolution went badly
And after a confused sortie or two
The Lithuanian men were dismissed
And that was that.
So your great-grandfather
Was left to walk his way home
With not a penny to his name
And not a thing on his back
But his army clothes
And army boots
And army pack.
And he trudged
Through winter snows
And summer storms
For two whole years
At which point he arrived back home
Right on dinner time
And he burst right in
Without so much as a hello
His wife and children
(Presuming him dead)
Stared in terror
As this bear of a man
Grizzled and bearded and grime-smeared
Strode into their kitchen
Heaved the just-roasted chicken from the table
And ate it, right there
With his paws and his teeth
Their father the beast
Returned from the war.

In hindsight, I think:
It’s only 750 km
From St Petersburg to Lithuania
And Google Maps reckons
That I could do it on foot
In 150 hours
(and that’s not even power walking).
So I imagine the things he did for those years.
The stables he slept in
The drunkards who cheated him
The whores who consoled him
The fingers after fingers
Who pointed him astray
The wheeling, wide foosteps
Of his leathered, lost feet.
The crack in the rock face he found
Somewhere in Latvia
That lead him to a land
That was ruled by wild beasts
Dancing on their hind legs
And crowned with sweet flowers
Who taught him to waltz
To the tune of the bees
And who taught him to hunt
With his nails and his teeth
They teased out his hair
So it covered him in fur
And when he was ready
They sent him back home
Made as holy as morning
And as sacred as dew
And he spent all his days
As his children watched, wide-eyed
Enchanting the saplings
To sway as he sang.

*

izzy

those days when you want to write an entire novel on your skin
in felt tip pen, permanent marker,
like it’s not already there
like you’re not just peeling back layers
so people can see the words already written in bone, in fat and sinew

is it just like a courtesy thing?
to pour your wine into a glass when you’re drinking
the whole bottle by yourself?

do you think ‘maybe this is going too far’
when you’re sitting here listening to a mixtape
of songs about suicide

chosen by your favourite alt lit winnahs?

do you think ‘this is just wallowing’
thinking of whales on shores,
curling and uncurling your fingers

do you think ‘this is an endoscopy of sadness’
collecting data to be analysed
and turned into bad art later

and you want to lick
granules of glass off your lips
just to see what it would feel like

in your head, that’s not a violent impulse
it’s more like sugar
fairly harmless
not bloody and raw and dribbling down your face
and staring at you in the mirror like
‘what the fuck did you do?’

*

sarah

Shopping list:

Icy poles. Zooper Doopers, preferably. Failing that, Frosty Fruits.
Zucchini.
Cucumber.
Quick, get something else so it doesn’t look as though you’re just going to go home and eat a packet of icy poles by yourself while using vegetables as dildos oh god.
Bananas (goddamn it).
Quick quick quick find the least cock-shaped item in sight quick.
Capsicum (phew).
Mushrooms.
Apricots.
Nectarines.
Bread.
Cash out.
Cool breeze.
Traffic lights.
Night.
Feet on the gutter.
Kiss on the forehead.
Punch in the gut.
Aching rush.
Breathless need.
Actual need.
Like an occy strap between your legs.
Pulling you back towards that body.
Man goes green.
Step into road.
Flash of air.
Stumble back.
Cyclist careening through a red light.
No helmet.
No apologies.
Take a moment.
Step back forward back forward.
Like a drunk cat.
See the street’s eyes on you.
People cats cars all glowing.
Shake down.
Eyes front.
Look cool.
Find car keys.
Drive.

*

izzy

last week, I woke up and my room was dripping in gold.
not gold like gold leaf/carats/sequins/grills
but like orange fire.

all the goldfish in the entire city had escaped
schlepped themselves over here to hang off the light
sticking to the carpet and the walls,
some of them swimming in the air and blowing bubbles
just to watch me sleep.

at first, it was weird
but now I can’t sleep without their thousand tiny eyes on me.

*

sarah

I haven’t thrown up since I was seven
Sliding queasily around an ice skating rink
Then arriving home to vomit out the apple
That my mother provided to quell my nausea
I remember the hot foul red mess in the bowl
And now, twenty-five, I am on my knees
Kowtowing to a faintly reeking pink toilet
Spitting out foam like a leaky tap
Wobbly all over, retching and heaving,
But there’s nothing coming out
And every twenty minutes, I walk in white-lipped
And walk out pink-lipped and shaking
All the lead up, no performance
I think I’ve forgotten how to lose control.

*