Put on your RED Shoes and Dance
commands the side of a passing freight train. my uplifted head, my rapidly moving eyes struggle to apprehend the compartmentalised forms, locked within its chain-linked cabins. in its wake, a bougainvillea sunset seeps into the exposed socket / hole left by an extracted cypress. the sight of the tree’s drying taproot, only half-pulled from its jaw of earth, causes my molars to ache. causes me to absently press a knuckle, star-white with cold, against my mouth. other fragments of the tree - a perfumed foot an oily root - lie in the gutter.
a sudden low hum indicates the cricket-stadium floodlights switching on. two beaming pillars illuminate a huge pitch-streaked moth circling above, searching for its dinner. i walk with cynicism, wary of knives bones protruding from the path. in a near-by house electric light & warmth pass through frosted windows / under doors like the smells of cooking. my remembering nose touches bowls of glossy tangerines, my remembering tongue sees a head a neck an apron string moving around a kitchen . . . tires skidding blasting loud as horns
in the home for women with disordered eating, a girl named Phoebe (& a toad) are occupying the outside loo. somnambulant phoebe, her bowels shuddering her eyes squeezed closed, imagines the long sausage-like ropes of her guts slipping loose. she grins / groans as the world shrinks / becomes the snow white sickle moons of her toenails, as the fifty pills she hoarded work their disgusting magic. Alice (who is equipped with more willpower, thinks phoebe), in front of a mirror in another room starts her whirling dervish prayers. she clicks spins turns her jagged knees her dogbone ribs her red-hot dancing shoes her in time.
a cloud of almond & garlic rolls over the park. the fish i caught in the river & wrapped in newspaper stowed in my bag go swinging through the air. three flatheads land on the other side of the road. the grass surrounding me is pelted with squashed black pearly dates. i raise my hand to my face, surprised that its skin has become transparent infrared. I glance down at my stomach; a shining visceral trail issues from somewhere near my belly button. i touch it, simultaneously noticing that the front door key has been tattooed to my left arm. washing around me, the night, including its banana-peel moon, is blue. a dog begins to bark.
Henna on the Soles of her Feet
the lily pilly bush has been washed. its multitude of blooming clitorises glistens. an ibis scoops lake water, bubbling like beer, up & into its spatulate beak. ingesting the painted, spreading sky, my eyes blink like the back of your throat. two sphincters contract, swallowing fig trees whose leaves brush up against concrete, whose branches long ago formed themselves into a gray & twisted convolution. someone else has been walking on my path. i calculate her weight, i measure her strides by dipping my finger into the depressed pans her footsteps have made. this earth-space, dense with convoluvous & introduced pests like Scottish thistle, like the purple belladonna weeds that plait and weave themselves over mangrove & fig cultivating / animating with rampant growth the brush strokes of a stultified, green menagerie; elephants & lions, tigers & bears . . . has been invaded. she is both enormous and in a rush.
the grave of a suicide, dug beneath the convergence of three roads, in order that its ghost be forever trampled into silence by the press of traffic - such superstitious beliefs, surely we no longer attach ourselves to & yet - this is where the fruit-bowl-deep hollows (produced by she, who crushed the soil, forcing it to part, like legs), end. unlike most of the plots populating the necropolis, this one has recently been tended to. a gray wheelie bin, overflowing with dead & stinking lilies, roses, carnations, daffodils, tulips & cellophane, has been parked, to its right. the suicide’s grave gives me the heebie-jeebies. i take note of a snake, stuffed with its latest meal (a possum? a large rat?), its long, disgusting body an intestine, draped like tinsel across the unmarked headstone.
where did she go from here? i am confused. i do not know which direction i should take. i try to guide myself beyond the bent down-in-supernatural-worship trees. the ferryman refused my fare. the unfaithful sun is busy washing its hairy rays in the river. in the inverted blue-green cauldron of sky, like a steaming cup of Chinese tea, a storm is brewing . . . then i discover the resumption of her long & strident steps. she has strewn something, lifted from the bag of fragments & particles she clutches at her side, in her wake. i bend, my backbone cracks, my kneebones grind in protest, in order to retrieve the cryptic message.
About the Author
Melissa Ashley is a student (literature) and assistant director of the Queensland Poetry Festival: a celebration of performance, textual, experimental, old, young, and everything in between regarding poetics, which runs for five days in July. She administers a prize for poetry (Australian), focusing on emerging writers, called "The Arts Queensland Award for Unpublished Poetry". She has had work published in journals and e-zines around Australia. In her spare time she is step mother to a four year old girl, and religiously describes herself as pagan.
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