wanted, wanting

I found myself hanging upside down in the roof of his mouth,

The sphinx, like a leaf

caught in his stone teeth.

You were there.

It was brittle.

You followed me to the garden of Gethsemane,

where things are gorgeous

In their weakness,

And beneath the olive tree

we lay

down with open mouths waiting

for everything to

drop. Olives, stars, pennies

The salty

lot.

 

A man in a pointy suit

With frightening mirrors for shoes told

us, ‘if you sacrifice your heart you

will get ahead’.

We laughed, only monsters

have two

heads.  And by that he measured us,

I’m not sure what

his measures

meant.

 

What’s worse is that a tiger wept

with a thorn in his paw.

In tomorrow’s circus

tent you helped me pull it out.

It bled. You are kind

so you read us all

the things that

Solomon ever thought

Or said.

 

I made you a crown

of upturned daggers, and you made

me wings out of

quail feathers.

When tiny flowers grew

out of my temples,

you said

my mind must

be a beautiful place. I worried that

all their roots would come

loose in

an unbeautiful way.

 

Leave it at that,

some blues don’t wash out. 

In the ocean

where the sky is

wet and tall and inside out

we find a trapdoor,

We come out among the

stars. They drink in our strangeness,

our limbs and our soft textured

skins. And the way

we like to be told, and gasp

at how brutally we want

to be adored.

 

 

 

 

famous people and food

It’s fun to imagine certain people eating certain food.

1. Hitler eating avocado.

2. Bob Dylan eating a cheese stringer.

3. Julia Gillard with chicken nuggets.

4. The Queen eating an Uncle Toby’s roll up.

5. Leonardo Dicaprio with a mini quiche.

‘The Pros and Cons of The Bubble Bath’

 

Pros –

1.You can use your toes as fingers. This is unfortunately rare in the outside world.

2. Bubble beards and bubble hair.

3. It evokes nostalgia for being a kid when the bath was a lot bigger and you were a lot smaller.

 

Cons –

1. You feel like you’re a dumpling in miso soup.

2. You can’t bring your cat.

3. No matter how comfortable you tell yourself you are reading your book in the bath, you will always be more comfortable on your bed. Or the couch. Or pretty much anywhere that isn’t a water retentive porcelain nest.

SWELL!

is ‘swell’ the abbreviation of ‘so well’ !?

“how are you?”

‘so well!’

“how’s your paper mache project going?”

‘swell!’

Like when you see someone on the street who looks like your dad and you feel like you trust him or when your bus nearly crashes and you jerk forward and shriek an obscenity in the ear of the woman in front of you or when you wonder why on earth no one seems to have time for cowboy boots these days?

i hate when people spell ‘going’ without the ‘g’ at the end,

like ‘goin’

it just looks like groin

and sometimes i misread ‘replies’ as ‘reptiles’

some girl will say 

‘he never replies’

and i’ll think, 

‘gosh, i hope not?’

Biography Attempt III

Emma Pitman, aspiring mermaid and burrito enthusiast, is soon to graduate from UTS’ Writing and Cultural Studies program. This is her first experience of being published. Aside from writing, she is currently  trying to patent her invention of banana flavoured Coca Cola.