Fiona Wright

First, the dust cross-pollinates.
Guards in saggy khaki scratch
their noses, spit phlegm
before their stamps rubber
...

My sister doesn't shop at Bankstown any more
because the drivers are all crazy, or else they all
hold both a licence and a pension card.
...

Silt, and minerals.
The brittling walls
now float on the waning water,
...

When their skirts swell in the flouncing water
like the thick wave
of a stingray, and their hair
grows weedlike on their cheeks,
...

The old stilts creak,
creak and clank
in the water's plump lap,
lipped oysters cling to chafe-legged piers.
...

I'm wearing a little thin
dress and the space
between buildings and sky honeys.
The road narrows - this,
...

The evenings have grown sharp now.
Light slinks through the blind slats,
the gaps beneath lintels.
...

after Marjorie Barnard

At first cut
it collapses like a slashed tire.
This translucent flesh
...

For Jane


To her, they never slithered -
rather a rustling, the stiff
...

for Chewy and Ella


1
Short glass, the petrol gleam
...

for Tara

A girl in coral and horn glasses
is discussing the relative frequency
of her massages and orgasms,
and how protein shakes
are made from cattle hearts,
and how the sniffer dogs
might find the Valium in her handbag.

It's an Indian Summer, and the fairylights
asphyxiate a tree, the bistro buzzers
skitter on the tabletops

and she leans in close,
and chews her plastic straw
and lets her eyes grow wide
on the nervous man beside her.

She tells him
about a recent wedding, where both parties
looked like they were eight months pregnant
and how she's never understood
why lemons cost much less than limes
and that she's still black and blue
from horse-riding
and this pub really changes of a Friday
and she never should have listened to for Tara

A girl in coral and horn glasses
is discussing the relative frequency
of her massages and orgasms,
and how protein shakes
are made from cattle hearts,
and how the sniffer dogs
might find the Valium in her handbag.

It's an Indian Summer, and the fairylights
asphyxiate a tree, the bistro buzzers
skitter on the tabletops

and she leans in close,
and chews her plastic straw
and lets her eyes grow wide
on the nervous man beside her.

She tells him
about a recent wedding, where both parties
looked like they were eight months pregnant
and how she's never understood
why lemons cost much less than limes
and that she's still black and blue
from horse-riding
and this pub really changes of a Friday
and she never should have listened to her mother.

Three women haul their prams onto the balcony
and shake bottles of formula
and order bloody marys.
A girl in horn-rimmed glasses and coral nails
grabs the man beside her by his nervous hand
and leads him out into the street.her mother.

Three women haul their prams onto the balcony
and shake bottles of formula
and order bloody marys.
A girl in horn-rimmed glasses and coral nails
grabs the man beside her by his nervous hand
and leads him out into the street.
...

The city walled. The house have plain clay faces.
These streets have not been mapped.
The stooped doors force a downcast head.
...