Jackson

On a street of dead lawns, security grilles bricks through windows where St Vincent de Paul’s have moved out because of crime I’m thinking about soldiers and guards. Fire stakes, nine-tails, gas chambers, rape camps, waterboards. Detention centres. Deaths in custody. Cell suicide. Paddywagon murder. Along the footpath a young woman pushes a a stroller.… Read more

words like an electric bass, driving rhythms into my cunt like a chainsaw truck-howl guitar slashing hot claws of noise across my breasts, piercing my nipples I should get my tits tattooed with SUCK HERE, get SCRATCH & SNIFF just above my bikini line Read more

Cafe Boulevard deconstructs its caesar salad and lets me eat in front of the computer as I never do at home. Dymocks takes five of my books but Borders tells me to call head office. Mary Martins takes two. After the reading I go out with Peach and Ava Lanche and MCM and Alice and… Read more

Melbourne, July 2009 There’s a Nick Cave on every corner in shock-black hair, hitching up his ill-fitting pants on his skinny structure, leaning into doorways, smoking There’s a buttoned-up New York coat and hat on every block, black or checked, standing straight There’s a thin face, shadowed chin, sideways look It’s in all this brick… Read more

The man in the wheelchair wears black opshop clothes: pilled sweatshirt, saggy pants. He has a carton of Coke Zero between his feet. His hair is cold charcoal and ash. His thirtyish face is a shattered crystal. The surfaces of his brow and forehead, the structures of his nose and chin. He has a straight… Read more

“The Independent Type” exhibition, Melbourne, 2009 Dead poets placed, plastered, exhibited, all the words I’ve missed, and I try to copy what’s left into my head using my dilated pupils and blood-framed lenses But I’m too late The uniformed man comes The lights are going out The sun is going down on Melbourne again Live… Read more