May 2011
1 post
from hell
I mean really, why would being naked make him bite me? If anything, you’d think that being naked and free, reflecting the monkey’s nudity, all of us god’s fair children frolicking under the glorious sunlight – you think it’d make him feel more at peace with me, more connected? Yeah, well. I never met god, but I met Jesus. He seemed like a reasonable guy. He told me that I’d done some things...
April 2010
3 posts
Film Review: Precious →
Review of the film ‘Precious’ as published in The Brag Magazine.
Otoliths Issue Thirteen →
Buy Otoliths Issue Thirteen, which contains contains work by Adam Fieled, Amelia Schmidt, Anne Gorrick, Francis Raven, Bob Heman, Jeff Harrison, Michael K. White, Jeff Encke, Geof Huth & Tom Beckett, Sam Langer, pd mallamo, Charles Freeland, Daniel f Bradley & Mike Cannell, Mark Cunningham, R. L. Swihart, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Paul Siegell, Marcia Arrieta, Martin Edmond, Adam Strauss,...
Unremarkable on Radio National read by Toby... →
You can download the version of Unremarkable recorded at Radio National for the City Nights project. It’s read by STC actor Toby Schmitz.
February 2010
4 posts
some fictions
some fictions are true, she says,
with a grin like a magician. not all of them,
she says, but some are. for example,
she says, pointing to a wolf wearing
the clothes of an old lady, asleep in a single bed,
for example, she says, this is true. also this,
she says, drawing my attention to
a young man leaning over a sleeping girl,
kissing her, softly waking her. that is also true,
she says....
Inside Brother's Stomach
Inside brother’s stomach I am curled up twice over.
Intertwined intestines, knees knock elbows. My fingernails have grown long and textured like twigs.
Between his ribs and spleen I rest my head, and when I blink he says he feels butterflies.
Inside brother’s stomach I close my eyes and hold on from the inside.
An ache you’ve ignored:
Twin, my other, I have always loved...
Saturn
Lover, tonight I am Saturn
And you my circling rings
Saturnine, I find things tiring
Uninspiring, your body in
some languid repose
and mine –
dull, tonight, and I’m distracted by the stars.
Listen, I’m not worth running rings round
Tonight I’m not even solid.
Mechanical
This is how it works: From underneath, the hook grabs the eye And pulls the chain through the loop. This forces the small, rough parts to collide and spark, Thereby starting the pistons which Drive the small motor which Powers the weaving device that smoothly creates a textile That wraps around the wheel-edge and creates a strong, tight canvas On to which the magnifying glass, at only this...
January 2010
8 posts
Metropolitan
This city no longer electrifies me. Trains are just side-winding skyscrapers, repeated like grey suits on a grey sidewalk. There used to be shocks in the skids and collisions – now I’m biting on powerlines for the jolt that I need. Rolling traffic over my toes to make sure I feel it go past. Each zip code refuses me. I know the rhythms of traffic lights like my mother’s ...
Moving
When I said I needed help moving
I was talking about boxes
But also your hands and my hips.
Stay
The sex was incidental, compared to what happened next. Compared to what happened when I put on my clothes and said I was going to leave, and he said with his hands, stay. He stroked my hair and the feeling of his palm on my forehead said, stay. He ran his fingers across my arms, down my back, behind my ears, over my knuckles, as if he might only have this chance to touch these parts of me, as if...
101 word love story
It’s a sunny day when I rear-end your car and you come out to meet me to get my details. I notice that you delicately brush my hand for just a touch too long and as I write down my name and number on the receipt for dry cleaning you hand me I can feel you staring at me, at my hands, at my face, my undone shoelaces, and I can smell fresh petrol that has accidentally splashed on you. I nervously...
Interview with Voiceworks Magazine →
Shore 2
I took a dive under and through a wave, arching my back as I exploded at the top of it and flew backwards, falling on to its crest as it broke beneath me. The wave crashed in to the shore and tickled the dry sand, and then rushed back towards me.
As I touched my feet to the sand I felt my ankles dragging forward, water hands wrapped around them and tugging. The wave disappeared back to sea, to...
Shore
She comes out of the ocean and later lays her head on his chest, her hair all fanned out across it. Her skin tastes salty from sea, and sweat, and she listens to his chest like a conch, for the sounds of waves breaking or softer, a heartbeat.
Through The Clock's Workings →
You can download a story I wrote for this anthology in pdf.
October 2009
8 posts
I wanted to ask you
It was like we were slowly just depositing little tiny bits of feelings in to each other, like we were both garbage bins that the other walked past on the way to work. Maybe they were even facing each other on opposite sides of the road. And every day, one little bus ticket was put in there. But eventually, if somehow you could separate all the bus tickets that you had put inside the bin and put...
Unravelled
Dear Mrs Livingstone,
I am writing to you to express my deepest and most sincere apologies in regards to your son, Liam, whom I was very close to and spent a lot of time with. Obviously not as close to him as you were, or anywhere near as much time as you spent with him, but enough, you know, to feel like we had some sort of connection and that I could judge him to be a wonderful person. And by...
Ways I have learnt about loss
The first and last time
In my memory, it is all teal and off-white, ugly paintings and the smell of disinfectant. It was a stupidly sunny day, and I had come to visit her, because she was dying. We all knew it, so it was only decent to come and see her, before we couldn’t anymore. Seeing my grandmother had always been a chore, at least according to my mother.
At her apartment, which was about a...
Recurring dream
I have this recurring dream that you come to me and you are crying, as if everything in the world has pressed down on you and around you like a squeezing hand so hard that you are leaking tears. You look at me with big, shining eyes and your wet face is salty like you have just been thrown out of the ocean. I ask you what is the matter, naturally, and you can do nothing but choke your voice down...
Unremarkable
It could have been any party, really, but it was this one and we were going to go to it, not for any reason in particular but because it was a Saturday and there was a party. And we were going. With beer. It doesn’t really matter who we are, we’re just some people going to a party, any party really, we weren’t together for any reason, just that we were all going to the same party.
It was any...
Back Seat Driving
The days are heavy. Sleep comes easily, drowning me each night, exhausted without reason. I do not dream – but for you, I labour over dreams, constructing them like epic novels, struggling to find the perfect scenes. Sleep comes easily, but my dream work is drawn out and tiresome. Sleep itself suffocates me, and I wake up an insomniac’s double.
*
You lock eyes with yourself in the mirror while...
Smoke
Our grandfather’s father smoked himself to death. Each morning he’d wake up, plod towards the bathroom, splash his face with water and his chest with cologne. He’d keep his packet of cigarettes in the cabinet, and before he shaved, before the rays of sunlight hit the brass edges of the mirror in such a way that it illuminated his face like some shining angelic light, he would light a cigarette.
...
Ways I go home
My mother calls me and asks me if I’d like to take care of their house when she and my father take a vacation in the colourful part of spring. It would be a great help, she says, and the birds do need to be fed. I can’t trust just anyone, she says.
My apartment is tired and lonely and I am keen to be tired and lonely in my childhood house, so arrangements are made. There is nothing much in my...