April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Joseph Han was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. His fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Bamboo Ridge Press, Word Riot, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Eclectica Magazine, and Hawaiʻi Pacific Review. As of Fall 2015, he will be a Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa.
Real estate (dream house)
This burning house belongs to my father
waiting for wood to buckle under
the weight of heat. The realtor said
he could keep the land if he remained
standing in the center. Like a good son,
I crawl around beams, past melting
plaster burning ripples, searching
for father through walls. He kneels
in the living room, writing plans with
his finger dipped in soot and saliva
mixed in an empty cup of soju.
We’ll build a hagwon here, father
and son. Next round waiting to boil.
I sit by him and pour in the glass
meant for me, unable to tell sweat from
tears on his face. On my own. They taste
like ocean. He grabs his lower back in pain.
You can teach English, I can drive students,
give a tour. His face melts under eyes,
cheeks sagging. No more taxi cab.
I wrap myself around his legs to hold
him in place, a beggar wondering how
much left of us can burn. Please, no less.
My father stands tall – a faithful candle.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Lachlan Brown is a lecturer in English literature and creative writing at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga. His first volume, Limited Cities, was published by Girmondo in 2012 and was commended for the Mary Gilmore Prize. He has been shortlisted for the Blake Prize and the Newcastle Poetry prize. His poems have appeared in journals including Cordite, Mascara, Antipodes and Rabbit. Lachlan is currently working on a manuscript that explores his Chinese-Australian heritage, his grandmother’s hoarding, and the complex promises of the Asian century.
(self-justification)
Every stupid thing has a story
that ties it back to the house.
Words follow me outside,
threaten quiet atrocities.
But after a while I stop
listening to outro tracks,
the security door locking on its own,
my body leaving to fill the sixth dumpster.
(even chance or, why you find it difficult to speak with people in a lift)
peaceful evil
turbo-dieselling
consumer sentiment
with your dumb tongue
like that folding bicycle
your uncle brought
back from Taiwan
in his decade of tricks and risk
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jessica Yu is the recipient of the 2014 Young Writers Innovation Prize. Her recent/forthcoming fiction, poetry and non-fiction can be read in The Best Australian Poems 2014, The Lifted Brow (online), Kill Your Darlings, The Digital Brow, PITCH, Seizure, the Meanjin blog, Peril, Dialect and Right Now. Her short story, “Keh Kut” won Best Fiction Piece in an Express Media Publication in 2014 and her essay, “Flab and Excess…” was listed as one of the top ten essays published on The Lifted Brow Website in 2014.
durian
beneath that thick skull and
prickly personality
you are softer
and sweeter
than diarrhoea
cockles
your two halves open
like ears to a compliment
I swallow your pearl
it falls apart
on the raw edge of my tooth
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Shirley Lu is a poet from Sydney, New South Wales. Her work has appeared in Freckled Magazine, Thistle Magazine, A Hundred Gourds, and elsewhere. She is interested in and inspired by the origins of words, the gap between a source and its translation(s), and sunlight.
Buddha’s Hands
Night, wayward. Dreams weave in and out of thunderous minds,
tidal and green. We sway in our sleep. Fruit bats inch towards
the Tropic of Capricorn, towards swirling air. Cats slink, purr, pounce
like clouds. Feet slide along bedsheets covered with imaginary dots
marking base camps. A murmur in the dark. A line of light east of here,
humming. A dull beeping at Bb. Feet fall to bamboo floorboards, heavy
with smog and sunflower seeds. Cats run back to their owners,
who are distracted by coffee makers. Fruit bats hang in casuarina forests.
Day, emergent. We burst out of ourselves like Buddha’s Hands.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
R. D. Wood is of Malayalee and Scottish descent and identifies as a person of colour. He has had work published or that is forthcoming from Southerly, Jacket2, Best Australian Poetry, JASAL and Foucault Studies. His first book of poems is due to be released by Hawk Press in September 2015.
Cento from Paul Celan
for Mervyn Morris
White, white, white
The whitest root
Of the whitest
Mime themselves whitegray
Mourning, gone awry
Black
We stand here
Black – a decoy
No admittance! Blacktoll
The disbranched archangels stand here
To stand, in the shadow
Your dream, butting from the watch.
Still songs to sing beyond
Count them, touch them
You – all, all real. I – all delusion.)
Note:
This poem uses whole lines from Pierre Joris’ translations of Paul Celan’s later poetry found in Breathturn Into Timestead (FSG, 2014). A full list of references can be provided.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Stuart Barnes is a Tasmanian-born, Queensland-based poet and the poetry editor of Tincture Journal and Verity La. In 2014 he was named Runner-up in the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and co-judged the ACT Publishing Awards’ poetry category. An anthology of poetry, with Robbie Coburn, Nathan Hondros, Rose Hunter, Carly-Jay Metcalfe and Michele Seminara, is forthcoming from Regime Books. Twitter @StuartABarnes
MH: Who is the poet who has most inspired you, and why?
SB: At my 30th birthday party a friend gave me a Brunswick Street Bookstore voucher, which I redeemed for Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (and Mervyn Peake’s The Gormenghast Trilogy, which inspired Faith, one of my favourite records by The Cure). Collected helped me navigate a particularly intense depression. In Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Lowell writes: “[Plath] almost makes one feel at first reading that almost all other poetry is about nothing. … [Although] I can scarcely bear to read her poems through, they are so agonized. A bit formless for my taste, too”. Interesting observations. The former I agree with; the latter rubs me the wrong way. I find Plath’s poetry and prose—Johnny Panic, Unabridged Journals, Letters Home—transformative, distinct, composed; thick with wit, drive, love, hope and well crafted last lines. These aspects continue to inspire; her life’s minutiae only insofar as they influenced her writing.
MH: What is poetry for?
SB: Pleasure. Pain relief. Enlightenment. Escape. Absolution. Past, present, future.
MH: Could you tell us a little about being an online editor? What are the pains and joys of this?
SB: I love editing poetry for Tincture Journal and Verity La, but the online environment is a double-edged sword: 24/7-accessible, yet an energy leech. More and more I dream about living off the grid, but I don’t want to relinquish what I do. To be able to read and edit others’ poetry is a privilege and a great collaboration. I often think I’m more enriched by the experience than the contributors. One of the joys, which outnumber the pains, is accepting that first work by an exceptional new writer: an unearthing of buried treasure. One of the pains is sifting incorrectly sent material; guidelines are so easy to follow.
MH: If you could live anywhere else in the world where would it be? Why so?
SB: Ancient Egypt or British East Africa. Dreams, visions, past life experiences.
MH: Could you list ten of your favourite poetry collections please…?
SB: Alphabetised: Ashes in the Air, Ali Alizadeh; Free Logic, Rachael Briggs; When My Brother Was an Aztec, Natalie Diaz; The Three Fates & Other Poems, Rosemary Dobson; Bone Scan, Gwen Harwood; The Striped World, Emma Jones; The Earth in the Attic, Fady Joudah; Ariel: The Restored Edition, Sylvia Plath; The Brink, Jacob Polley; Akhenaten, Dorothy Porter.
MH: What is your relationship to music?
SB: I was raised in a home where there was always the right LP for the right occasion. Before I could speak I could hum Dolly, Johnny, The Beatles. From an early age I’d set my alarm for 11 p.m. every Friday and Saturday, watch rage till just before my parents woke. I loved, equally, the new music, the guest programmers, the Top 50 Countdown. Besides befriending Gwen Harwood, hymns were the only thing I liked about church. At ten, with my own pocket money, I bought my first record: Bananarama’s WOW! An obsession with everything Stock Aitken Waterman followed. At fifteen I was introduced to The Cure, discovered a number of almost-as-brilliant UK bands: Curve, Ride, Dead Can Dance, Swervedriver, Cocteau Twins, Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Jesus and Mary Chain. From America: Primus, Fugazi, Red Hot Chili Peppers. In those days triple j was a spring of astonishing alternative music; I digged, just as much, Hobart’s local mainstream stations. When I moved to Melbourne at eighteen I met a girl obsessed with Britpop and electronica. Each week, music drew us to Q&A, Smashing, Teriyaki Anarki Saki. Blur, Pulp and Suede I still listen to; FSOL, Sasha and Digweed and Laurent Garnier, too. At the turn of the second millennium, Warp Records, Philip Glass, Henryk Górecki. Gay, underground and day clubs, raves and dance parties offered up a honking skein of artists. For a number of years I played violin, guitar, piano; for several I wrote songs and sang “as badly as Robert Smith”, according to my family (I always wanted to be a writer, but I always wanted to be a rock star more: too shy; and I never could perfect that union of lyrics and melody). For a couple in the mid-noughties I DJ’ed at three Melbourne pubs. Eventually I stopped going to bars, clubs, gigs, stopped smoking, drinking and whatnot. “Our relationship will suffer!” I needn’t have worried. I became more resourceful (podcasts, SoundCloud, Shazam). Nowadays, I put on music less often, though with no less affection; I’ve learnt to enjoy the silence. Occasionally I miss the dance floor’s sweat ‘n’ bump, its tribal triumph. All music and all lyrics, particularly The Cure’s and Robert Smith’s, have influenced the big things, writing especially. Music has been pacifier and blue security blanket. Catalyst of Dionysian Mystery and screaming at the moon. Music is white flag, time machine, memory aid, stimulant, narcotic. Saint Etienne’s “I couldn’t go to Somerset on my own, so I used Top of the Pops as my World Atlas”. Magic moments (Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ at Wall Street at midnight on New Year’s Eve; The Orb’s extended live version of ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ at Earthcore at dawn; Diamanda Galás’ version of The Supremes’ ‘My World Is Empty Without You’ at twilight at Hamer Hall). Music is my North, my South, my East and West. The perfect—the only—drug, best served without preconception. Causes me to dance and sing, get up and do my thing. I am as happy cranking Zappa as I am miming ABBA. Spice Girls are as vital as Billy Bragg. Not every day, but I wake, write, edit, eat, shower, daydream and fall asleep to music.
MH: You are a big writer of centos. What attracts you to them?
SB: For years I’ve marvelled at the art of mixing vinyl, which I never mastered in the DJ days. I’ve never solved a cryptic crossword; the cento, I think, is poetry’s cryptic crossword. The challenge is highly attractive; I like rules, e.g., ‘Forcento’ (Rabbit Poetry Journal #10) lifted one line from six poems about gravity, ‘Penultimates’ (Regime 05) the second-to-last line from each of Ariel: The Restored Edition’s forty poems, ‘Cinquecento’ http://cordite.org.au/poetry/notheme3/cinquecento/ one line from fifteen poems written in the sixteenth century. Also (and this realisation occurred while talking with friend and fellow writer Nigel Featherstone last year), writing a cento is my way of critically engaging with other texts without reviewing them (I enjoy reviewing, but I’m slow at writing prose).
MH: Once upon a time poetry was quite popular. If in fact it still is, what can we do to make it even more popular, without sacrificing any of its difficulties?
SB: Sacrifice its poet-difficulties: the cynics, the trolls, the ogres.
MH: Why is the word ‘poet’ slightly amusing?
SB: “I’m a poet” is almost defiant; I have to find strangers’ and acquaintances’ insensitive responses slightly amusing: “I didn’t think they still existed! Where’s your inkwell, where’s your quill, where’s your powdered wig? Your favourite poet’s Plath, eh; you love all that doom and gloom? Does poetry pay the bills? When are you going to grow up? When are you going to get a real job?” And my favourite, which Ivor Indyk mentioned in Sydney Review of Books http://www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/20-march-2015-ivor-indyk-on-novelists-and-poets/: “Poets just sit around for months on end, waiting for inspiration”.
MH: How does living in Central Queensland affect your writing?
SB: In my editorial for Tincture Journal Issue Nine http://tincture-journal.com/buy-a-tincture/ I wrote about the astrological implications of living so close to the Tropic of Capricorn. The proximity of rainforest and the sea and clearly seeing the Milky Way have expanded my awareness of, my sensitivity to nature’s rhythms. Rockhampton receives over three hundred days of sunshine a year, a stark contrast to Melbourne, so I’m a happier chappie, a happier writer. Moving from Victoria utterly befuddled me. When I settled, however, the past’s horrors were uncorked and in poured new influences. I started taking yoga and meditation seriously; now, I practice every day. I kind of haunted Clifton Hill from a tiny three-storey two bedroom flat; here I’ve an enormous three bedroom Queenslander with a tyre swing, mangoes, coconut palms … Recently, my first tropical cyclone; in Marcia’s aftermath, as I gape at the poincianas and the gums, I’m reminded of lines from The Cure’s ‘Shake Dog Shake’ (“I’ll tear your red hair by the roots”) and Plath’s ‘The Hanging Man’ (“By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me”). This city’s very different, still very much an inspiration.
MH: Are there any areas you feel poetry should not venture into?
SB: No.
MH: When are you going to put a book out?
SB: A publication, with fellow poets Robbie Coburn, Nathan Hondros, Rose Hunter, Carly-Jay Metcalfe and Michele Seminara, is forthcoming from Regime Books.
~~~
MATT HETHERINGTON is a writer, music-maker, gourmet Indian chef, soccer nut, bludger, and lover based in Brisbane. His first collection of all-Japanese-related forms (and fourth poetry collection) is For Instance, published by Mulla Mulla Press. Some current inspirations are: Timbaland, Frisky Dingo, Jess, Luce, and northern sunshine. Matt’s latest published poetry can be found in a three-way collaboration with poets Ryan Van Winkle and David Stavanger here: http://ryanvanwinkle.com/projects/commiserate-2015/
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Chloe Wilson’s first poetry collection, The Mermaid Problem, was commended in the Anne Elder Award and Highly Commended in the Mary Gilmore Award. She won the 2014 Val Vallis Award for Unpublished Poetry and was Highly Commended in the 2014 Manchester Fiction Prize.
Pronunciation
It would be wrong to say he bought me. It’s never like that. He chose my photo, my description; I received a call from the agency; then we met at a dimly lit restaurant with black banquette seats. He ordered champagne and a platter of sushi and sashimi, the slivers of fish pink and glossy, like tongues.
‘You’ll have to teach me how to use chopsticks like that,’ he said.
‘You’re very good,’ I said. ‘Very natural.’
‘I hired a tutor,’ he said, slurping up a piece of eel, ‘last time I was in Japan.’
We negotiated terms. Of course, it’s not as businesslike as that. He talked about what he wanted – companionship, someone to take to dinners and parties, maybe with a view to the long term, depending on how things progressed – and when I didn’t object, he relaxed, ordered another bottle of wine.
He said he loved the way I had trouble with certain phrases – fifth floor, not at all.
After a few weeks, I had my own credit card.
After a year, he said he wanted to marry me.
I took his last name. But at night, in our futon with the koi-patterned sheets, he would whisper Mitsuki Tanaka, Mitsuki Tanaka. Even then, he was always trying to get his accent right.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Mark Brandi was born in Italy and then spent most of his childhood in a remote country Victorian pub. He now lives in Melbourne, where he writes fiction. He was the grateful recipient of a 2015 Varuna Residential Fellowship and was runner up for the 2014 NSW Writers’ Centre Varuna Fellowship. He was the 2014 winner of the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards and shortlisted for the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize. He was also longlisted for the 2015 International Caledonia Novel Award. His shorter work has appeared in literary journals and been broadcast on ABC Radio National. www.markbrandi.com
Like Ice
It stinks of shit. Heavy and sweet. Like the chow mein Mum cooked for the punters. Fried mince, cabbage and curry powder.
Dad’s lying in bed, the blankets pulled up to his neck.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
Mum’s eyes. Cheap liqueur chocolates. Her mouth twitches a broken beat. Closes the window. Opens it. Looks at me. Says it with her eyes.
I didn’t know who to call.
“Dad,’ I say. Too loud. ‘Is your head okay?”
“No.”
“Are you feeling sick?”
“I’m not sure.”
Mum’s candy-brittle smile. Crosses her arms. Shakes her head. “He’s just embarrassed.”
I help him sit up. Pull the blankets back – the shit is there. It’s on the mattress. It’s on the floor. There’s shit everywhere.
Mum dry retches.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed. Stands up shaky. Faded cotton undies and short-sleeve Aldi shirt. Chicken legs with hairless skin. His belly is much too big for chicken legs.
His thin, white hair is standing on end. Like a bush cockatoo.
Dad’s outside a country pub.
He just bought it.
He’s with Mum.
A gold-rush pub.
Empty for years.
Full of rats.
But there’s gold too.
Behind the fireplace.
They’ll find that later.
I tell him to put his arm around me.
“We’re gonna walk to the shower. You feel okay to walk?”
“I think so.”
We walk there. His hand on my arm. Soft fingers. Thin skin. Not like it used to be. Dried up leather. Old Blundstones in the sun.
It’s a nice bathroom. It’s better than mine. Dark-grey tiles. A special shower.
I show him how to use the mixer tap.
“I know,” he says.
“Make sure you clean your backside.”
Dad watches me mime the action of washing my arse with imaginary soap. The soap is clean and green in its little chrome tray. It doesn’t know what it’s in for.
Mum doesn’t know what she’s in for.
She doesn’t speak English.
Dad taught himself on the boat.
They’re gonna run it, he reckons.
He’s never run a pub.
He’s a train driver.
Diesel engines and punch-ups.
Aussies with big mouths.
Dad hurt his back.
Mum’s gonna be the cook.
Dad’s family are all insane.
Just ask anyone.
Mum is in the bedroom. She’s in the bedroom on her knees.
“Bloody dis-gusting.” She’s scrubbing the floor. “Filthy bastard.”
I hear the shower go on. “How did he … ?”
“Who knows? I’ll never get these stains out.”
Dad is in a brown suit.
He looks like Bob De Niro.
The judge is Lionel Murphy.
The judge says Dad made history.
A precedent, he said.
It’s about his back.
Mike Willesee wants to talk on telly.
Mike Willessee is all the rage.
But Dad won’t talk.
And Bob De Niro’s not a lawyer.
The shower goes off. So I listen at the door. The dead whirr of the fan.
“Finished?”
“Yeah.”
“Cleaned yourself properly?”
“Yeah.”
Swish and rustle. Starched towel on flesh. I hope he cleaned himself. I hope he got all the shit off. I hope he doesn’t stink.
It’s three weeks til his birthday.
It’s my friend’s birthday.
His mum drives me home.
Double-storey brick house.
Dad is building it himself.
Spanish arches.
No need for a roof.
We’ll live downstairs.
This isn’t my house.
So drive me somewhere else.
That’s exactly what I said.
In the kitchen, we dance around it. Like the last ones no-one picked. When no-one else is left.
“Well eventually …”
“He won’t go. It will kill him.”
“What’s gonna happen when—”
“I’ll do it as long as I can.”
Steps on the stairs.
Act casual.
He won’t know anyway.
He comes through the door. Pants pulled up high. Jumper tucked right in. Jacket on. Smiling.
All ready to go.
Schoolbag in the back.
Windscreen frozen over.
Ice, he says.
Get the hose.
From safe inside, I watch the cascade.
The crystal flow.
It floods.
I watch.
And wait.
Until he’s there again.
Through the glass and frost.
Just a shimmer in the morning sun.
As the ice begins to melt.
A thick woollen jumper.
His hair turning grey.
The smile won’t leave his eyes.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Rebecca Jessen lives in Toowoomba with her two cacti. She is the winner of the 2013 Queensland Literary Award for Best Emerging Author for her verse novel Gap. In 2012 Rebecca won the State Library of Queensland Young Writers Award. Rebecca’s writing has been published in The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks, Stilts, Scum Mag and Verity La. Rebecca’s verse novel Gap is out now through University of Queensland Press. She is the recipient of an AMP Tomorrow Maker grant.
The Late September Dogs
low mist hanging off a high mountain. driving cars worth more than your self esteem. a twenty-nine dollar tax return that feels both like a gift and a joke. waiting two hours for five minutes. leaving with your fifth K10 questionnaire in as many years. hopelessness is always high. nervousness is mostly circumstantial. lying face down in your IKEA furnished study. listening to a Melissa Etheridge LP as old as you. feeling both like an old soul and too young to know what life really is. scoring yourself thirty-five out of fifty on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale. half listening to your caseworker who is not a psychologist. almost believing when she says you eat and sleep too regularly to qualify as depressed. what you have is chronic low mood. there’s not much help or hope for people like you. sorry kid. not everyone can be happy. here take some vitamins. ignoring text messages from the government. asking your opinion on a safe night out. crying for no reason. listening to the same Melissa Etheridge song on repeat for two hours. crying for no reason. sorry kid. there’s not much help for people like you.
April 6, 2015 / mascara / 0 Comments
Ella Jeffery was born in northern New South Wales and currently lives in Shanghai, China. She writes poetry and short fiction, some of which has appeared in Best Australian Poems 2013, Cordite, Voiceworks and elsewhere. She will commence her PhD in creative writing at Queensland University of Technology in mid-2015.
Moths
It’s always late when I come here. It’s always cold outside. I can see her through the glass-panelled door. She thinks she’s keeping me waiting but I’m watching the patterns of the moths around the glass. Sometimes there’s so many of them I can barely see through it. They probably stay there all night, moving around and around the same ring of light.
She always opens the door with a lit cigarette in her mouth. But this part has happened only since I told her I was quitting. She lets me in without looking at me. The chatter of bats in the mango trees is snapped off when she pulls the door closed.
Here she is: bare feet and white legs. Black underwear and a white singlet with a red bra underneath, showing through like a blush on a pale cheek.
“You didn’t call,” she says, drifting back to the couch. “I might’ve been out.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“So?”
“So where would you go on a Tuesday?”
She laughs. She’s watching one of her crazy subtitled films. The directors are European, the women all have faces like crumpled paper and go insane about halfway through. The men are psychologists. The children die early on. Usually that’s the way it goes. She watches to the end.
I make myself a coffee while the psychologist wrestles with his screaming wife. The fluorescent in the kitchen buzzes with moths. More are on the windows, or skittering up in the corners of the high ceilings. There are always so many in here, though the only window I’ve ever seen her open is the one over her bed. Their movement is soundless, sightless. They’re not aiming for anything, except perhaps a higher part of the moulding wall. They just keep switching places and switching back, flickering around quietly, leap-frogging over each other with their chalky wings. I wonder if this is their home. A cramped space; the cupboards like tall men squished in an elevator, stretching up. The moths settle on the tops of them for a moment, and leave again. Hundreds of them bang against the light fitting. They must do this every night.
*
She lives just off the highway. I listen to the cars while I move over her. She never makes much sound but it didn’t take long to learn what she likes. She’s not a talker. She doesn’t get on top. I use my stubble against her, raking over her neck and cheeks. I hold her hands down. The only noises are the jolting of the bed, and under that is her quiet breathing, and under that is the sound of the moths, which gather in her bedroom more than anywhere else in the house.
I’ve never known a house to be more full of them than hers is tonight. The cars roar by. Where do people go on Tuesday nights?
A moth brushes over my hair as I finish and replace myself on the other side of the bed. She lights a cigarette, smokes from the flat of her back. She doesn’t offer me one, but I’d have taken it. The burning end shows her face in shaking light. When it’s done she ducks off to the shower and flicks on the light as she goes. Her room is never dark enough.
As she leaves I look up at the ceiling from the same place she laid a moment ago and see so many moths up there, more than I could count, and there is so much movement I feel almost dizzy. And more moths come in, and more and still more, so many moths that the light is now dimming, now blacked out, except the colour’s not black, it’s dusty brown and grey. Soon the room is filled with moths. They’re covering my skin and hair, and my mouth is shut as tight as it can go and I’m worrying about my ears and my nose, whether they’ll try to nudge their way inside me with their bulging alien faces and chalky wings. There’s only the sound of dull ruffling wings. Their antennae move noiselessly, listening or tasting, I can’t remember which. They’re on my face. I can see their tiny mouths, the tiniest mouths I have ever seen. And more are coming, stuffing themselves in through the door, and I can see them pressing their little furred bodies up against the windows, skittering over the walls.
I close my eyes. Moths land on the lids. The imprints of their feet. They don’t go anywhere. They don’t have anywhere to go.
“Hey,” I call out to her. “Come in here.” I keep my eyes closed and press my lips shut again and keep perfectly still under the movement of so many moths.
A second later she’s back and there are moths on the towel around her neck, landing in her wet hair. She shrugs and says “They’re just moths. They won’t hurt you.”
I get up anyway, shake them from my clothes and walk out of the door where they’re still crowded like mystics around the circle of light spilling out. I walk down to the highway and hope the last bus is running late. I look at the bone-coloured moon and I don’t imagine her in that old house, sleeping under blankets of moths.