BEDROOM is the last stamp on your passport. Across your chest, down the length of your skin (and bone), the weight of feathers. You are pinned. Butterfly, bird, chrysalis. Must we all desire flight? New horizons? You can see all the way to the end of your bed and this is far enough. Close one eye and your nose is a mountain, the world at its summit. Take a bath, they say, a lengthy lavender…
Dorothy waited in line at the bus shelter with her shopping trolley in the torpor of mid-afternoon. Through the windows of the approaching bus she could see the lively faces of high schoolers and hoped there’d be a seat. Halfway down the aisle an angular boy mumbled and stood up. As Dorothy was sinking onto the seat with relief, panic seized her. She’d forgotten to buy the all-important lemon. Oh, just this once would…
Nothing stirred on the frosted fields. Ducks rose off the river silent as commas. Elizabeth pulled her coat tight. Cloudlets fluttered from her mouth as she bowed her head and traipsed on, catching sight as she did of her muddy hem. Just as the first low fingers of sun were extending their reach she looked up to see a figure approaching in an overcoat, unbuttoned. He strode towards her, not yet aware of her, shirt…
Another red light. He palms his chin, taps the steering wheel. Sport-plus-shopping traffic. Next to him his wife is silent. What a way to spend Saturday morning, stuck in the car with her in a mood. His head hurts from last night. That’s why she’s pissed off. Green, but only two cars make it through. The hulking yellow and blue sign taunts in the distance. Bloody IKEA. He can’t stand the place. Full of pregnant…
published in Waiting for the Southerly October seems confused, we shed clothes put them on, look to the sky for clues shake our heads. Last week the relentless smack of blowflies on glass, shut against the sun later flung wide for any chance cool. Next day heaters retrieved from storage as snow falls in Katoomba. At night the news is complicated people run with their money presidents race to the finish line. I’ve heard the…
for my motherpublished in Waiting for the Southerly You used to fish off rocks under whiskered cliffs where crabs eyed me sideways clicking like mice bones. I watched your skill with knife and knot, your toughened skin stained with gut. I peered in pools gummed with limpets, anemones tugged my fingers like blissful newborns. We had the salt and wind, the gulls poised on updraughts and the far reach from beach to open sea. Now you…