Perilous adventures in writing & art
a thousand clear confetti spangle your arms like moons the scales of our fish dinner * the fruit in this poem cannot be eaten unlike the poet * the river remembers where it lives; no matter how often you turn me away I will return to the same bed * Not 2oo words today; but…
They say that on Wednesday, the fourscore of April, a great fish rose above the waters and began to sing. It was a wintry day; cold and blue. Her scales glittered like wet sequins. While she sang, she waved her pectoral fins, as though she danced upon the air. Clouds formed around her, or wisps of clouds, pale…
Marcel Proust once wrote: One only loves that which one does not entirely possess*. And Proust, as you know, has often been mistaken for a philosopher. Or a relationship advisor. He was French, after all, and we often confused ‘being French’ with a capacity for understanding love. We had thought that making love in Paris would bring…
The English verb relinquish comes from the Latin relinquere meaning to leave behind, forsake, abandon, or give up. I first encountered this verb as a young girl, at Sunday School, where I learned the story of the two women who bought their custodial dispute before the wise king, Solomon. The women lived together and had both recently given…
Now, don’t go supposing I’m messed in the head, like the others. I may be blind, but I’m not stupid. I know there are plenty of us who are a bit cracked, but not I. Not I. They first made themselves known when I was four, or maybe five. Candlewicking, my mother called it. The way they’d…
Have you been listening to Galactic Chat? A while ago I was interviewed by Alex Pierce for this wonderful program. I can’t bear to listen, but you should go ahead. I’ve really enjoyed listening to recent Galactic Chat interviews with Angela Slatter, Rosaleen Love and Alan Baxter. Go, listen. And explore the archives, too. It’s an embarrassment…
There are children singing in the courtyard. The same clapping game my sister and I once played. Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine The monkey chewed tobacco on the street-car line … If I could, I would rise from my chair and go to the window, look down and see them. The tops of their shining…
ear Winter, come you further in, fingering the wormholes of Hermione’s heart? Sixteen times she and I have wintered in this hall, warmed each other’s beds. She has risen over me, ridden high as a conqueror on the waves of my flesh And I, divided, have fallen eagerly beneath each victory cry. Autolycus, that finest…
for Darryl Chalk Fracastoro blamed the gown. Veronese, it was, and furred. Centuries later Mead, the gentle physic, wrote that furrs, feather, silk, hair, wool, cotton, flax* could imprison and release contagion. But back then, the men were fools, and nothing so precious as my fur could be burned. One after another they donned the gown and…
Carrion415 was old, but she was well-respected. She had been the first to carry dizygotic twins for two different sets of parents. Just thirteen she had been, and as narrow-hipped as a garter-snake, but she had carried them to term. A boy for his family in Berlin; a girl for her family in Melbourne. Five years later:…