“WEE-WOO, WEE-WOO ! Drama Queen alert !!!
You want your duffel coat back?!
Meet me at the Northcote Plaza parking lot at midnight. Bring a briefcase full of cash. Also, an unopened tube of Aesop hand cream!
Be there or say goodbye to the coat! For every ten minutes you keep me waiting I’m cutting off one of the toggles.
Which is to say, I hope the studying is going well. Let’s catch up after your exam!”
Hux has been very rude
lately Anna thinks one of our
neighbours is feeding him
Issy’s house hunt seems to be
getting serious she’s finding all
kinds of fruit trees in Brunswick
Mitch had another friend from
Perth visit, Tim Someone
friendly very tall liked clubbing
Cam brought Julia to the house
dinner it was nice to meet her
properly she’s loud charming
Nick’s new glasses are giving him
a headache I texted him
palm tree
butterfly
sad face
My mother is relieved I
finally got Medicare I think I’ll
be able to have a civilised conversation
But I’ll tell her to tell
Rafi he needs to call me it’s
been over a month!
Lily and Ardit say they’re
coming in early September I’ll
believe them when I see them
Bonnie will be here
in time for Sagittarius
season with its pollen
Jacob has changed
his Tinder bio
man and woman holding hands
Tiffany, Hazel, my father
all sent me photos of the mist
in Auckland how to bring it
here will be the trick
“What are you up to tonight?”
“Ugh, I’m off to see… Jacob.”
“Haha, how do you feel about that?”
“Well! The theme of this outfit is ‘Timothée Chalamet in the last 5 minutes of Call me by Your Name’ so... I’ve made an apple crumble.”
Did you do your exam last week?”
“No no no. I felt like I was dying. I didn’t think I’d be able to get anything done again.”
“Oh shit. I’m sorry to hear that. Was it cold sick or, like, head stuff? When do you have to do the exams?”
“Late July. 23rd and 22nd. Medication stuff.”
“The 23rd and 22nd?”
“Yes!”
“Good! Good…”
“I’ve spent the whole day on the reserve bank website. It’s been bothering me for years. I’ve decided to find out what money actually is.”
“What money is?”
“Yeah, yeah! Like, did you know the RBA….”
“Ok but like, what shape is the gold? Is it all in those bars? You know, those Toblerone-looking bars?”
“I’d imagine so.”
I’ve got numbers on my side
it’s really something
I count everything I know everybody’s birthday
this Wednesday will be meeting no.7
with Francesca and Ronnie and I’ll
have written 6 long texts and 4 short texts
and 3 texts which no one will read I’ve already got 2 new ones
to send through
Every day is an anniversary
of something
I was particularly aware of May 22nd
that was Bonnie it was also another thing
and the 3rd day
of every month is conspicuous
today is a 29th
nothing special on
August 21st will be funny
I have a speaking engagement with
the public and it will be
Jacob’s birthday that’s information
I don’t want but I have it because I
have a head for memorising dates
I remember August 21st of last year I was
nervous I had an exhibition starting
the next day which involved 21 delicate
sheets of paper I had to Sellotape to the wall
42 times
Now it’s the 30th and it was two weeks ago
that I wrote a particularly
heavy poem I think I’ve moved on
it was one week ago now
that I read a review of Maggie Nelson
it decided her work would fail
in the hands of “a more humid writer”
“I still think about that lecturer calling me ‘postmodern’. I must get to the bottom of it… Is that an oxymoron?
My Marxist friends really frown on postmodernism and I just wonder ‘can I be a Marxist and a… Will they let me?’
Judith Butler and Nancy Fraser have been arguing about this since the beginning of time. I just want the left, everyone, to stop fighting I mean none of us will get out of this alive.
And I still don’t know what to do about posthumanism. I used to think I was a human but now Jack Halberstam is making me feel guilty about it. Teabag in or out?”
“Out, thanks. Do you want some baklava? What do you want to do for dinner? I didn’t cook, I want to go out.”
My tram runs past your house
everything has become awful
Your friend Liv
who lives in Northcote
always wears a mint-green coat
I saw her last week on High St
and thought I was going to die
I went through your Facebook
to see if I could find a picture
of your ex-girlfriend
But I couldn’t find any
all I got was fomo
from the parties and music festivals
you’ve been to with your friends
that’s how I know everything is wrong
and getting worse
because I hate music festivals
And I hate your overall shorts
which for some reason
you think make you
a cute queer
as though everyone is stuck in 2015
and Mac Demarco has been cut off at the knees
and become a queer icon???
You said you fell in love with your ex
the moment you first saw her
I didn’t fall in love with you
the moment I first saw you
But everything is reeling
like I‘m carrying bricks
I love you in those overalls and
in a collapsed tent in a dry field
And every time my tram turns
and goes up past your street
I look for you
as though I’ll find you
Dear Homeowner,
I am writing to you as an admirer
of the porcelain cabbage
which sits in the square window
of the doorless brick wall of your house
It’s green and white
kind of a curved leaf
so it looks almost like a wave
trapped in the fibrous glaze
of its cabbageness
I love the porcelain cabbage
which sits in your window
and I want to tell you
that when I first saw it
around April of this year, I loved it especially
It used to sit
in the proud centre of your window
like the pale green eye
of a modernist cyclops
it was so enchanting!
But your porcelain cabbage no longer
has the middle spot
it’s been moved to the side
and replaced by a blankness
which I can only imagine
is the product
of the kind of restless indecision
which characterises many
small but ultimately profound changes
I go past your house on the bus sometimes
and keep an eye out
to see if you’ve moved it back
I’ve never sent an anonymous letter
I’ve never cared so deeply for porcelain
but there is something about the way
you keep the window empty
of anything but the cabbage
that makes me think you are someone
who cares about the emotional force
of aesthetic detail
Even though I don’t like it
in its current position
seeing the porcelain cabbage
in your window
when I go past on the bus
makes me smile
and gives me a resigned
Satisfaction
knowing that so much
can be said
for the movement
of approximately one foot
“I wrote a scathing article about you. A rebuttal of what you were saying the other day about bisexual people in heterosexual relationships. Hah!”
“Oh
My
God.
You are completely hahaha misconstruing what I was SAYING! I wasn’t even TALKING about bisexual-”
“I know I know I know I’m using you! You’re a pawn in my political game! I can’t wait to read it to you, you’re going to be so angry, hahahaHA!”
“You. Are. Such. A. Cunt. In any case, I was thinking about that conversation the other day and I AM embarrassed about it. I mean, it’s not that I necessarily disagree with what I was saying but I don’t think it’s right, or good politics. Those feelings just come from a place of pain, my own gender dysphoria…”
“I can’t even walk down the street without signifying queerness and there they go parading their heterosexuality all the while claiming the cool queer label.” Like bisexual people aren’t real! But we are! I exist!”
“You’ll wish you don’t exist when I exact my literary revenge.”
“What is your new writing about?”
“Ummm. I wrote about meee, I wrote about Antje and Hazel and the weather industrial complex. I wrote about youu…”
“Ahhh! Can I read it?”
“I don’t think so. Not now. Although I will tell you one thing I wrote was “If this PhD becomes any more about you, I’ll kill us both!””
“Hahaha. Well, that might end up happening. I’ve been wanting to have a serious conversation with you.”
“Oh? I want to have a serious conversation with you also.”
“You do?”
“I do. What would you like to say? Would you like to start?”
“Hmm.. Let’s cuddle for five more minutes.”
Dearest Nick
I was walking up Darebin
road in the wind I was
wearing my pyjama woollens
thinking what a day
for grocery shopping
I was walking quickly
I was walking so quickly one might have thought
I’d set myself on fire
I can hardly believe this
I can hardly believe they
are brothers
I was planning to bring you
home with me last night
Take your clothes off
But things get so
derailed
things got so derailed
when
we crashed
into the last name of
the last names to break our
hearts those fucking narcissists
it always has to be
about them!
You are so gracious, Nick
you are always diplomatic, Nick
I can tell Jacob would
have hated that about you
he once told me he condemned
his brother your Isaac
for dating boys he could talk over
he condemned himself
of maybe doing the same
thing I told him
to get fucked
What a funny surprise, Nick
that we bear such similar
shaped anvils on our backs
you said they were like
the perfect family in a sit-com
kind of a way
I think I know exactly what
you’re talking about
And I think it’s so fucked
how things turned out
As though no one was ever actually
in a sit-com
I was planning to bring you
home with me last night
take your clothes off
but things derail so quickly
when you set yourself on fire
I want to apologise, Nick
for still being on fire
for smouldering at the fan
of your gossip
which parent might be
homophobic as though it
might one day
have anything to do with
me
I want to apologise, Nick
I couldn’t bring you home with me I am confused and
so on fire
And now it’s the next day
it’s blowing a gale but still good
for grocery shopping
and you just replied to my text
I can hardly say where
to go from here
but I have to come up
with something I’m walking
so quickly
Yes, fair enough
and it is so hard
to learn something like
how to be more relaxed
because it seems so abstract!
but you are doing well,
I reckon picture your anxiety
as the possessed zombie
in episode four
and you are about to fly out the window
wearing a stunning flowing outfit
unlike any regular hospital gown
and you slide with great agility
onto the grass outside in the light rain
and the bandage covering your eyes
unwraps itself elegantly
and knife in hand
you slay the zombie
and kill “The weakness in yourself”!
and then the two years
for which you’ve been asleep
replay like a film
I have been coming to visit you
every day with a new bouquet of flowers
and when it rains
the droplets gather on the plastic wrapping
reminding you of spring
even in winter
Lily I hate this
everything, it’s the death of me
I can tell from our group chat
that it’s also the death of you
I’ve been researching gulags
to see how inappropriate it would be
to draw them in comparison with working
in luxury retail
I’ve decided I don’t care what destructive political consequences
and austere Marxist judgments
might befall me, I know it and you know it too
neither one is a party
So when you call me and cry down the phone
and tell me you’re quitting your job
leave the fuckers!
And when I call you and cry through the screen
and tell you my heart has broken
let him rot in… well, how about a gulag?
Lily who are we doing this for
if not each other
everything I write I send you to read
We have code names for each other
so when you message me it appears to come from someone
named Delusionella
which is fitting because
especially now
it’s all too much
without partial delusion
I like to think of us floating through pink petals
I like to think of you riding into Fitzroy on a sea serpent
to breathe demonic mist on my romantic failures
I’m not hard to please
I just want everyone who crosses us to die in an action movie
which we won’t go to see
because we have more discerning taste
than Hollywood
and our enemies combined
I’m leaving the house
I’m wearing a scarf you gave me
three years ago as a Christmas present
I walk past the mailbox
Turn left onto the street
Image:
Andrea Büttner, Beggar series 2016, detail view,
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2019.
Photograph by Sholto Buck