Days pinch and lately I’ve noticed every time I look in the mirror I’m squinting—maybe it’s a grimace. Without trying I’ve mastered the façade of a Besser block threatened by a mallet, by which I mean maybe the world won’t kill me but it’ll definitely hurt and I’ve got to be ready.

We were not skydivers in the 1990s, I did not wear a cream crocheted bikini top, I was not in / love for the first time, we didn’t talk quietly amongst ourselves in large crowds about sex and / its dramas, we did not drink piss-weak beer, we did not pay $16 a jump and there was never a / DC-3 or a perfect sunset through its window, we never fell through snow.

I know you can hear, I’m talking directly / to the power socket, the transparent plug / each copper wire visible, like a bisection / of brain, pineal gland folded, a queen / around a void, the nest hovering around / them.

the jumpers I lent never find their way back / barely rehearsed, cold / overwhelmed I wasn’t ready for / the day has become tight / trying to force open a poem / the airtime in my mind

Futurity begins now with leftovers sunglasses trying too hard along with cheapskates a kind of pink plastic essence * Destiny stinks! * What if we went crazy in the carpark a scuffle on the grease The green bag is torn beside it, a line of ants working hidden in the glare * What now! The […]

Factories sulk with sweat and grit Cafes and hairdressers wild with renewed hustle Slick-back and jet-black and conk shaved of sick disarray, and one dark fringe longer and falling without the need to flick it back.

blah moon smoulders as I careen        like a pulsar towards hot blah summer           I am failing       flailing       feeling    in a thalassic blah       in a time where I can’t hear the constant hum of the earth above the hum of mass air conditioning      originally invented to help ink dry & stop pages warping       it now entombs us in productivity      delusion lives in the phrase climate control         I think of sweat as a type of release    a friend texts me      did u know we work almost twice as much as medieval peasants? fml                     why am I

she existed in masks: lorikeets loudest in the mornings, leaves deliberating on a breezy day, blinds fluttering against the sill, the hum of conversation on the footpath by her window, Fleetwood Mac, her fingers on the keyboard (tippity-tap), her anxious dog’s paws pattering on the floorboards, her husband’s snoring at 3am, the off-and-on whir of […]