Pennsylvania

There are packed bags in the boot of a car and a chill that’s felt as the wind winds through looped coils of wool in a jumper. This is you.

You are the motel, the diner, you are things in a vast expanse, where crass greenery grows from the driest of ditches.

You are the deep woods watched from a car window; The Interstate, intent on going on forever; a voice counting forward and then back (asking, are we there yet?).

There is the hum of an engine with a million miles to go, hands on a wheel, the changing of gears and you: a deer captured by headlights, stunned and stubborn and fragile as crushed bones.

You are words, logic, numbers — whatever can be caught in a net of frightened thought.

You are the heat of the moment.

You are everything that’s left in a room someone owned for a night — someplace imagined, scratched, rough and faded in memory.

Hands cover ears, breath is held imperfectly.

There is ink scrawled down an arm, a reminder on a wrist: you are pigment that won’t budge.

Cat’s eyes trail behind headlights; a needle thumps on vinyl somewhere — you are the owner of its long forgotten song.

Grain ripples in an endless field, burnt orange falls below a horizon, the land whispers small prayers: in this is you.

You are a smattering of memories never had.

You are Pennsylvania, a photograph of someplace I never knew.

(Image: Tema Stauffer)

You can hear some Rabbit tonight...

Tonight Rabbit launches edition 2 and editor Jessica Wilkinson has put together a shin-dig at The Alderman on Lygon Street in Brunswick East.

I'll be reading some work with Zoe Dzunko, Michael Farrell, Ann Vickery, Mark Prendergast and Patrick Jones.

Feel free to swing by for some works and tunes at 6.30pm tonight!

(You can grab copies of Rabbit from Readings, Collected Works and Melbourne University Bookstore, I'm told.)

Birthday

It was the first time you had smiled that way,

the lines on your face deep and whole, but no one really noticed.

It was the candles on the cake that had made the twinkle in your eye.

I can see that now.

Between happy birthday and she’s a good fellow,

we were eager for ice-cream cake and trifle.

Caught in the moment, we passed you gifts

that didn’t really matter.

When they raised you up on their shoulders,

high and proud, your brothers’ arms

did not let you down

until the men were told they must.

The earth took you whole.

It wasn’t fair, it was said,

that you were dressed in the frock your mother preferred

when you were always one for pants and casual attire.

It wasn’t fair, it was said,

that a girl should find herself in the ground so soon.

But between mouthfuls of cake,

with the wax of twenty eight candles spilled on your mother’s best cloth,

I saw the smile that I mistook for something

other than relief.

(Image: Gregory Holm)
(It is 'Are you ok day' today, preventing suicide.)

Africa: My Darling Patricia

Africa lays a slice of Australian Suburbia bare like a gutted carcass amid a cloud of beautiful dreams. Here is company that finally does what many have failed to do. My Darling Patricia holds a mirror up to Australians in a most sublime and enigmatic way so we might see the grit and love in our own backyards.

Arts House Meat Market, Melbourne
Wed 27 - Sat 30 April.
www.artshouse.com.au

Collisons and bumps: happy anniversary

Life is full of collisions.


Sometimes they're wrecks — the kind that make for massive change and re-evaluation, the kind that have you tend to wounds and find wisdom in the once rough-and-pink now smooth-and-white scars that are left behind. Reminders of coming full circle. Learning something more.

Sometimes they're bumps —like the kind that might happen in the street, right place, right time. They resonate without the markings on skin. They come more as nudges, reminders to buck up and flash some teeth rather than bare them.

Tema came as a bump after a wreck a year ago.

I collided with her work online. I tend to sift through images like a beach bum with a metal detector looking for gold and I found this image and it sparked words. Tema then stumbled upon Jemima, this here place with her work nestled in nicely, and then wrote to me from 10000 miles away.

Over the past year we've exchanged photos and more words. In her work I've found a little gold in times when I felt I simply wouldn't.  We've mused life, love, words and photography never finding firm outcomes or answers but somehow we've continued to be small bumps for each other when needed.

So Ms Tema Stauffer, happy pen-pal anniversary. I'm looking forward to a New York 'cuppa' (she now knows what that means), meeting you, and a Brooklyn summer ...

Quickstep

There is the toothbrush she used once that you bought for her,

which will probably go to waste

There are the times she broke you, almost, that led here, to this,
that had the line draw itself — a quick-start marker for something that now, you figure, seems as good a time as any for

There are the Polariods tacked to your fridge that one by one you will remove. And the lumps of tack, spaced four inches apart,

still clinging to the mirror of your dresser

There is that rush coursing though your veins 

that makes it feel better now you're running down the track to somewhere you're not sure of, but hoped for, with her

Now's as good a time as any, you say

There was the slow burn to the quick: her blood-shot eyes and unsure smile just enough to drink up, then find your frame against hers —

mirrors in the moments you each allowed the sink of thick lips to dream for the night

There were the times that went unmentioned —

mornings where she noticed the pale blue vessels by your eyes as you slept, the faint mole by your lip. And never said a thing

There is her head over a bucket, heart thumping — the soft veins in her temples rushing, the 'huh-huh' sharp breaths in her crying, because she said her heart wasn't built for running, but pace she prayed she could do

There is something new, more fresh than stale words and broken breath, that puts a glint in your eye, a thin flush through your arteries — it dulls the whispers as your heart dances the quick-step

There is that careening feeling now that gives just enough hope to keep you running — tack marks in a heart dancing fast might heal,
if you just keep those eyes fixed ahead, and run

(Image: Tema Stauffer)

These Gods for Black Rider

Allison Browning - these gods from The Black Rider on Vimeo.