izzy

I’m sending you my eyes
in the mail
so you can borrow this view

express post, air mail
all the mod cons
the postie will dance when she delivers it
with bells round her ankles
and a stupid novelty kilt

my boots are soaked through
rain streaming black down cheeks
I either can’t feel my face or
I’m feeling it for the first time

cold knees creak along the footpaths
there are runners everywhere
breaking up the dark with mechanical breaths

chest crushed like sponge
words can cripple you
with the press of letters
inside this little pigeon chest
swarming and kicking
knocking at the hollows

I wear this shirt like a second skin
the imprint of another body
pressed onto mine in this fabric
hanging loose like a pelt
moulding to me
languid and spent

somewhere there is a woman
who has climbed the tallest building
who has peeled her fingers back
from her eyes
who has breathed the clouds that settle
around the turrets like halos
and looked down at this city
and owned it
this is a woman with wings

she doesn’t miss people
she is not limbless
flailing
ungrounded
she doesn’t get catatonic
with homesickness
she just kicks ass

*

sarah

A spider bit me today. Wandered onto my upper arm and left me with an extra elbow, a grumbly red mountain topped with a crusted cap of lymph. I chinese burned myself in an attempt to see the site. I remembered a time years ago, waking from a skittering dream in a haze of dizzy confusion, my fingers chasing itches into consciousness. Through my bleariness, I took stock and evaluated that there were three fundamental truths in the world:


1. I had been bitten by a spider.
2. I was going to die (I knew this unequivocally).
3. I was quite tired.


Despite the pressing nature of points 1 and 2, they couldn’t quite override point 3, and so, with a sort of valiantly disinterested sense of duty, I stumbled to my computer and wrote a brief note explaining the situation. I pointed out the location of the bites in order to speed the autopsy process, wrote a generic imperative demanding that everyone I knew live their lives in a fulfilling sort of way, instructed that everyone was to be told that I loved them, even if I probably didn’t and finally made it entirely clear that nobody (nobody!) was to even think of making a play about me in order to process my death. And then I tumbled back to bed. The next morning I woke up, briefly marvelled at the fact that I hadn’t expired, and went about my day. 



Tonight, in the doorway of a strange new home, my housemate stood silhouetted in the sultry dusk and pointed at where the golden orb weavers had laced the house in webs. I imagined my skin rumbling like a volcano, erupting in a chaos of fine gold silk to wrap the walls until the building was tea cosied in a glittering shroud. Thought, I will pave the streets with golden carpets and swaddle the schoolchildren in blankets as flaxen as their hair. I will spin ropes for royalty and sew satin pillows for the coffins of kings.

And then we locked the door, and took our leave, and I scratched with secret pride the itch on my arm.

*

izzy

my chest is a cave
walking home at 3am,
filled with fog and red sandstone
freezing cold and it’s fucking
beautiful
and romantic as shit
spindly trees loom in closer
closer

warm streetlights
stroke my woollen head
cold air licks my face
kisses my eyes

there’s a kid with a scooter
and a water pistol
at the end of the street

we stare each other down
I think ‘it’s a bit late –
surely it’s too late
for this tiny little kid’
(she’s about 8 or 10)
‘for this stout, mean-looking
kid to be out here all alone
with nothing but a water pistol.’

but then the little bastard starts
speeding towards me,
foot scraping away at the pavement
slap slap slapping
face fisted in determination
arm outstretched, pointing that
bloody water pistol
right between my eyes

and I am sitting on a windowsill
smoking air cold as daggers
Maxime speaks in maxims
slips a few more of my ciggies into his pocket –
like I can’t see –
jerk.

and there’s the tiniest flicker of fire
trickling up the walls of my cave
as I lean into this windowsill
and I’m fanning it, blowing at it
asking it to burn brighter, burn a little hotter
so I can stop thinking about the 40 degree heat
calling to me from the other side of the world.

*

sarah

Today, as the roads shimmered like oases
I read that asylum seekers on Manus Island
Are limited to 500 ml of water per day
And in the sweaty dusk, I felt the earth’s curve
And I felt sick.

*

izzy

I saw her on the wing
as we passed over the Carpathian Mountains
en route from Dubai.

snowcaps lush and perilous,
falling away beneath her dangling feet
she held on with a desperate strength
face gritted with certainty
and determination
ready for anything,
anything but an engine failure

her eyes are locked
like a slow-moving hurricane.

the only way is up
and falling is easy
if you do it with purpose

this is a woman who knows what she wants
this is a woman who knows how to arrive

*

sarah

When the end days come
And the cities burn in the night
Like beacons of what we once lost
When the asphalt melts
And the sand on the beaches
Turns to slippery glass
I’ll take to the seas
With a cutlass between my teeth
And a compass to my chest
Tattoo my eyelids with squid ink
Fashion a beard of sea foam
And push headlong
Into the screaming wide ocean
To fight what is left to be fought

*

izzy

the sky looks different
from within
denser, more tangible,
full of the idea of itself
holding sunlight to it
like a lover

red lipstick grins
through the cabin –
it’s part of the uniform
crop circles and oceans
fading into each other below

whissskeycola, I am
getting smashed
with the leathery Italian
sitting next to me in
cheery middle-age
gurning out my window
like teenagers

at the sky over Western Australia
crackled red
smashed with grey cloud
huge ropes of rain
trailing down to home dirt

we’ll have a cigarette
together at Changi
the Italians telling me
about their respective chidren
best friends, who are now tied
to my hometown
he speaks in stops and starts
she doesn’t stop

it takes me forever to remember
what ‘caldo’ means
‘hot’ not ‘cold’
and he is telling me
– repeatedly –
how much I will need
my thick tweed coat
to hold me
to wrap its lambswool
collar around my slender neck.

their tans are ten times
deeper than mine
yet still they know
– better than I do –
that I could never be prepared
for this bone cold.

*

sarah

An itch under my eyeball took hold of its bloody strings
And steered it away from the neon and paradise lights
Towards a greasy flap of burlap tent
Smelling like the sewers had burped it back up.
My feet took off, two unattended infants
And I wheeled through a vulgar slit in the fabric
To stand, queasy in the colostrum-coloured air
Before a bruised wooden box
Pierced with a brass eyepiece
Adorned with hamfisted lettering
Promising ‘A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES.’
As the carnival crashed outside
And the pistons hissed on the sick old rides
I pressed my rolling eye to the glass socket
And peered on in.
A guttering light rose and flashed
Illuminating a mirror of glacial perfection
Cold and still and polished
And in it, I saw my own distended pupil
Straining against the veins that held it in
Bloodshot and sulky
And we regarded each other, the eye and I
For time without timing, lazily blinking
I sighed with the crashing of my boredom
And as I did, I saw my mirrored eye suddenly sliced
Bifurcated almost imperceptibly
Cut in two by the tiniest of cracks
And then again – the crack doubled
And again, again, spidering across the glass
The fractures spiralled, silent and irrevocable
And my eye became two, become nine, became legion
All staring and blinking and darting
And seeing and seeing and seeing and seeing
And I gazed upon an army of myselves
And the dozens reflected in my eyes saw themselves back again
And so were thousands, and millions, and more
And they saw me and I was afraid
Threw myself backwards from the tent
And ran. Left those infinite copies of myself
Sharing stares and winks and rolls and tears
And threw myself blind into the night.

*

izzy

putting my seal skin back on
worried it won’t –
it does –
tight around the waist but
it still fits

sleek and wet
the time has come
to slip away again

*

sarah

The moonlight licks your shoulder
We hiss and sizzle
Like bacon fat frying
Like soft drink kissing ice
And sigh, water on a hot wok
And I’m left with salty lips
And a kitchen to clean

*

izzy

inside this whale’s chest
we can hear each other breathing

giant ribs against our tangled spines
and the swell of the ocean
pressing in against our hollow

this is what it means to be close to someone
exhaling in the dark

*

sarah

i pressed my nose against the glass
left a little round wet smudge
which i regarded with a certain air of pride
the way a dog banished to the yard
wages quiet war against a polished window

*

izzy

miraculously, the rest of the building was unharmed.

the blackened exterior of the Morgans’ apartment
was carved perfectly out of the tenement
a gaping hole between the Richardsons’
and Mr Henekky’s 5-cat condominium

the pavement was sprinkled with glass
brick fragments
and ash

the firefighters were confused
the coroner even more so

when the evidence was pieced together
witness reports taken down
of shaking walls,
quaking floors,
moaning and heavy breathing breaking through the brick

with the burnt bones bagged,
security footage scoured
and melded pelvises thoroughly examined
it was determined that the Morgans
had spontaneously combusted
making love in their queen size posturepedic.
*

sarah

excuse me sorry hi
i don’t mean to complain
it’s just that, as of yesterday
someone seems to have injected concrete
into my sinuses
and actually, now that i think of it,
into my left ear too
and halfway down my neck
and i was just wondering
whether there have been some sort of
bungled council works
i mean, i know that it’s all a bit mad
for you guys, what with the
east-west link kerfuffle going on
and i just thought that perhaps
at some point
some roadworks might have happened
in some inadvertent way
inside my face.
is there a form i can fill in?
a toll free number i can call?
i’m sure that you’re all very busy
it’s just that it’s rather inconvenient
having a headful of concrete
as i’m sure you can imagine.
i did some googling
(i know, i know)
and the general results seem to indicate
that it’s just the common cold
but really, i’m not convinced
what with the government
monitoring our search results
and given mr abbott’s
plummeting approval ratings
i can entirely understand why
you’d rather have this covered up
but i think that with some delicate negotiation
i could probably be consoled
with an out-of-court settlement
quite a large one
actually.
i’ll leave my number
and email address
i don’t have a fax machine
so, apologies for that
i’m sure you’ll be in touch
sincerely,
etc.

*

izzy

holding my head in a bathroom stall
at the British Consulate,
eating the sun
touching faces
our brains made of fairy floss
and lips like battery acid

in the blinding light of Mars rising
our souls blinked
Mars moved
this ain’t the end
unless you say it
croon it

the guttural croak of goodbye
catching on your tongue like hooks
this is a flute stop
this is raw cheeks
and spent palms
this is only Mars rising

*

sarah

See that dude at the bar?
Been there since opening.
Hasn’t moved a muscle.
Hunched like a quarterback.
Prune-juice face dripping into a beer.
Must be a hundred.
Must be a thousand.
Seen his belt buckle?
Shaped like a wolf.
Total pussy magnet.
Musta been fucking since 1843.
I hear he screwed Marilyn Monroe.
Elizabeth Taylor.
Queen Elizabeth II.
Dude’s still got it.
Eyes all squinched up
Pupils sliding languid round the corners.
Takin’ it all in.
See those hands?
Gun-slinger hands.
Horse-rider hands.
Hands to pull out a man’s heart.
Show it to him while he dies.
I heard he was a daredevil.
Jumped off the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Not even a bungee cord to hold him.
Did all of Buster Keaton’s stunts.
Went over the Niagara Falls in a barrel.
See that twitch in his shoulders?
He knows we’re talking.
He can hear trouble.
Smells fear.
Once lived on tree moss and adrenalin.
For three months.
Four years.
Fought in the war.
Which one? All of them.
Hired by the government.
He’s a double agent.
He’s a quadruple agent.
He works for every country under the sun.
Plays them off like a deck of cards.
Hasn’t got a real name.
Lost it in a hand of poker.
He can make himself disappear.
You glance away for a second and he’s gone.
He’s been nursing that beer for hours.
It’s a cover.
A ruse.
He’s on the job.
Probably packing heat.
Probably strapped with dynamite.
Suicide mission.
Going out with a bang.
Saw his woman one last time.
Kissed the kid goodbye.
(Must be thousands of them, the kids.)
Kissed one of the kids goodbye.
Yeah, that’s it, the kids.
Yeah, that’s it.
He’s roaming the world.
Doing the rounds.
Saying goodbye.
Finding every squalling little bastard kid.
Stroking its head.
Winking at its mum.
Then vanishing into the night.
It’s been years.
Tracking down all those snotty little kiddies.
Every woman he ever left.
And tonight, it’s the last one.
One last beer.
One last kid to kiss.
And then he’s out.
Fuck.
What a dude.
What a fucking dude.
Raise your glasses, boys.
Next round’s on me.

*

izzy

map these bones
chipped and brittle
crack the crust and
suck my marrow

clean these fossils
these remains
lay me out to whiten
in the sun, hold me

while I disintegrate
crumble me to dust
let me be the speck
the dust in your eye

*

sarah

God, I wish you weren’t leaving.
You are the oracle of fucking Delphi
And without you, Greece is lost.
You speak, and in the shape of your words,
Light blooms, like orchids in the night.
You carve the world’s nonsense into form,
Push it up against the wall
And shove a finger past its waistband.
You said to me once, through drunken, desperate gasps
And tumbling, secret laughs
That I would be yours one day.
Words like a prophesy.
Darkness made flesh.
You make me believe in love.
You paint the world in carnal colours
And elaborate, connect-the-dots stars.
You dance to the tune of the next train announcements
You pick out the song in the garbage truck roar
You stalk all the sunsets with a huntress’ heart
And the dawn bows down reverent to your gold goddess eyes.

*

izzy

thunderstorms form in the bellies of mountains
wisps of cloud extend their fingers toward
the others, grasping and conjoining
disappearing into each others’ breath

the night breathes out, wet and satisfied
frogs glutted and singing for more
we waited until the cloud engulfed us,
linked hands and jumped

clouds fall upwards together
rolling and clashing as one great body
crackling through sky, running nowhere
until they disintegrate back down into the dirt

*

sarah

I pressed my crumpled brown paper bag face
Into my crumpled brown paper bag sheets
But my tears were a tomato sandwich
And they leaked, squashed and hot and sticky
To stain the bed with fat wet streaks

*