Jackson

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

Lay down your laptop Turn off your phone Let’s have no more text messages no more emails and no more goddamn Facebook! Let’s touch. I said, Let’s touch. And I don’t mean lintpicking. I want to mess your hair and stroke your face and grab you. Let’s turn off the city lights and let the Read more

Elena was someone’s daughter, sixteen or maybe older. She came for one night only. I didn’t write her face, just her hair: short slick black. Down in the Cafe Sport theatre among the smoke and poets she spoke the wish of a martyr in words of wisps of a zephyr, like a brush of palest Read more