Every week I cross town on the train and we pass a tower block of identical grey-frame units which have grey balconies. One balcony, at eye level with the train, has a bright pink inflatable flamingo hanging like a lurid fern, I guess somebody went to Florida or Havana and brought it back with them […]
On Sunday in the midst of strife I had a most wonderful day. Met an acquaintance who wanted something from me, and we walked into a foreign land so familiar that I fell into my childhood, and the sweet world intricate and divine which sustained my deepest breaths when I was seven, nine, twelve, eleven […]
The people across the road are drunk and two of them are planning to have sex together tonight for the first time. That’s at this stage, it’s not even dark yet, we’ve still got the Fight that Blows Up Out of Nowhere and Falling Asleep in the Pizza up our sleeves. Their voices carry and […]
The strange screeching of tropical birds spurling into midnight’s blue sky at 6 o’clock, as the night gathers like a dew, forms like a band, a marching band of strange and unaccountable, uncountable, nasty-beaked bird, weird big birds, glossy little birds, green birds and brown. Brisbanana. You are utterly the weirdest, my sweet suburban love.
A small scream from the other room. “What? What?” “Can you come here?” On the rug is lying toes-up a small, lucid-bellied, iridescent, recently murdered gecko. Its tail has been severed to a bloody stump: it didn’t just drop, it was ripped off. By its extreme corners I pick up the rug and gingerly carry […]
“Aw!” ‘What?’ “Aw just… somebody’s torn this little plant out, and now it’s gunna die.” I could hear my surprised, injured tone of voice, high like a disappointed child. My friend stopped and I had already squatted in front of the dismal garden bed built round the trunk of a tree, in which someone had […]