Jackson

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

Lipstick your mouth, then open it. Speak clearly. Finish your words and leave spaces between them. Be big-eyed and soft-lipped in pantyhose, a powder-blue twinset, newsreader hair, a beret, and a knitted scarf. Wear a silver cross at your pushed-up cleavage to promise him godly motherhood, safe behind tall gates in beautiful BMW McMansionville. Pronounce… Read more

They tried to regrow the forest. Met on alternate Saturdays with baby trees in tubes, buckets, plastic tree-guards. The rows of holes, sheltered seedlings, rations of water their day-off task. Some seedlings died. Some grew, became ungovernable trees. But it wasn’t a forest. Even after seven years, twelve, fifty, the wipe remained, the clean, the… Read more

My mother said not to put it in the dryer. All that heat! all that wind! Hang it under the verandah. Don’t go out to the laundromat with its strangers, bad coffee, trashy magazines. Stay home, stoke the kitchen fire. My mother said not to put my identity in the dryer but I did and… Read more