Jackson

I hope he’s sleeping in in her arms and lazily making love and having breakfast and all of that. I hope that. Yeah, it hurts. But it hurts a whole lot more to imagine him lonely. Read more

Walking on Queensberry Street one Saturday night we find a single red rose: longstemmed, cellophaned, perfect. I pick it up in my black-gloved hand. If you’d been anyone but you I’d have said “For you sir” with a flirty bow and a smile, with a performance. We discuss how it might have got there and Read more

Just text me, will you? I don’t know where you are but I’m in the park with my phone, crying behind sunglasses So life is really friends & their babies and not these obsessions and loves? Life is that? All the shallow smiles? A man does tai chi, or something. Does it help? He does Read more

McMansions on fake waterfronts under Melbourne’s wide smog I wish I hadn’t had kids then I could just sit in the Black Cat in Fitzroy drinking coffee and tea until the water runs out with no-one to explain it to why we did it and why these McMansions will never be anyone’s heritage. Read more

Now that my thoughts are flecked with grey Now that they are shaved down       to a thin minimum Now that everyone is inserting       their own sharp tongues       into me, Now that hens and wrens are preening and perching,       waiting their turn to scratch and peck me       for a ration of feed Now that my skin Read more

He does not make words for me. He makes me a mirror, frames it in jarrah. He makes a coat-rack for my long black coat and the children’s raincoats. When I ask him to, he installs tracks and poles for my curtains, moves furniture to where I want it, devising solutions to the problems engendered Read more