Jackson

(Portrait of Rita) Commissioned 2009. This work may not be reproduced by any process, including printing, without permission. In all she did, she loved. The glow of her! Her Welsh voice, its gentle lilts and rolls a balmy pool with bubbles, waves and ripples. Her lipstick-pretty mouth. Her peach-bloom cheeks. Her neatly cultured brows and… Read more

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