Peace, Tony, Devil Pt 2

We go to a trendy café, and sit on the street. I ask about her husband. I’ve only met him once; he seems to be nice enough. Bland though, so bland. Antonia is so sweet and bizarre. I sometimes wonder why she settled for him. Her response is perfunctory and she quickly changes the topic. She doesn’t ever want to talk about him or babies. I find this a bit strange although at the same time I know how an expecting parent is questioned. It’s always the same questions. I figure she just wants a break from being a pregnant married woman when she is with me.

Instead we talk about the other women in the class. This is about all we have in common, not that this is a problem. We both have a particular fondness for Audra, Colette’s partner. She’s probably our favourite person in the class. She has guts without needing to show it. Just as Colette never misses a beat to mention the sacrifice she feels she is making, Audra will never let it slip by overlooked. Colette doesn’t tend to notice but Audra lets us all know what really occurs. In reality Colette begged and bargained with Audra to have the first child. She likes to feel she is the groundbreaker in all of her relationships. It all stems from her desire for recognition. She needs to win. Almost everything is a competition with Colette. Audra tends to balance her. She doesn’t need to win and she likes direction.

Tonight’s exercise was really about the pregnant woman (or person) in the class and most of the husbands sat around the edges of the room or milled about at the refreshment table. Only Audra and Daniel sat with their women and helped them focus. I can only think of two people in the class who aren’t absolutely terrified about what is happening to their bodies and that is Colette and myself. It seems odd that competitive Colette wouldn’t be worried about losing her figure but she truly isn’t. As long as she’s doing it first she’s not afraid of anything.

‘I think she’s amazing.’

‘Colette? Why? She’s painful.’

‘No, Audra. She amazes me. Her patience with that woman is more than admirable. You wonder how they paired up.’

‘I wonder how you and Lachlan paired up.’ Only I don’t say that last part. No one ever quite follows through with all that they are thinking.

‘It is a wonder,’ I smile at her.

We finish our milkshakes and cheesecake glad there is a baby to blame the cravings and weight on. We walk on the beach, it’s nicer at night. The funny thing about being pregnant is that strangers think that your belly is public domain and rush to touch you, to get some sense of this new life. At night not so much.

‘I can’t wait to stop working,’ huffs Antonia, ‘I’m taking eight months off, then Lachlan will take six or so then we’ll see what happens. I don’t think I will want to keep working full time after that. What about you?’

‘One fortnight left for me. Paternity leave, I get twelve months paid. I love my job. The bosses hate me though, they definitely didn’t see this coming when they hired me,’ I chuckle, “after that, who knows?”

We get back to her Hummer and she drops me to my building. I climb the stairs wearily and enter my apartment. The first thing I do when I get home is open all the windows I possibly can. I can’t abide by stale air, I feel compressed and it makes me anxious. I wonder if that’s how the baby floating inside me feels. I often wonder what it is thinking. Some people say a baby is born with all the knowledge in the universe inside them and as they grow, those first few months, all the new stimulation around them, all the wondrous things they see make them forget or repress the knowledge and they can never tell us.

I think about Antonia, her slight frame and her swelling belly. I slowly repeat everything she said to me tonight to myself in her soulful voice. I don’t know if it’s a talent or magic but I can talk in any voice I can imagine. So when I say these words to myself it is her voice I and the walls around me hear. It is a trick that is more useful than you can imagine, my boss thinks I have a wife. She sometimes calls in sick for me.

THE SOCIETY OF EROTIC POETS QUARTERLY JOURNAL VOL. 1 MARCH 2010

Carroll Digested

You won't sleep, take the paperclip and carve the door in two.

Did you see? Did you see? I saw your naked feet and tried to fold myself into the door.

Fold the note a thousand times with twice-clipped nails.

Notes and hitch-knots fail to bind, contrive and lead to nothing but a tangle.

They say, long string in hand, can't tie knots? Tie lots!

But she had long brown hair!

Enjoy your tingling scalp as your hair curls into the tar-dollop.

I curl the wrong fingers around the rails and bound down the stairs on wobbly ankles.

The confused fingers that interrupt conversation.

The conversation that always seems to come too late.

It is late, I should go to sleep.

But I won't sleep.

DAVID JOHNSTON


Peace, Tony, Devil Pt. 1

‘Focus on the spiral. Focus on my voice. Focus on your breath. 3, 2, 1. Control it lad… people!’

She still forgets I’m here most of the time. It’s an interesting place to be, a prenatal class. It’s even more interesting when you are a single man.

‘Keep breathing! Keep it controlled. Focus on the signals your body is sending! It’s most important to keep calm!’ The way Laura yells this seems to counteract her instructions. She’s new to this, and has to be forgiven. This room full of pregnant women makes her nervous. My presence is not helping.

When I first arrived to class our instructor Laura was dumbfounded. Being fresh to the job she wasn’t quite sure what to say to me. When she asked me if I was sure I was in the right place I began to cry and held my belly protectively like you often see pregnant women do.

I have an idea what you’re thinking about my motives for being here. It’s likely you’re wrong though. I’m not here to find a woman. Nor am I motivated by sex. Perhaps you would think it’s a good place to find a willing partner, obviously these ladies put out. I am having a baby. It’s not as impossible as you think. You need to open your mind. Almost anything is possible these days.

Some women bring their husbands and one woman, Colette, brings her girlfriend. She’s having the first baby and her partner will have the second, she often mentions the sacrifice she feels she’s making, to her career and such. She’s the only one her who seems reluctant to be pregnant. Colette however is the only one in the fortunate position to have an option to expand her family without her herself having a baby. She is much further along than I am. She’s almost ready to give birth.

Everyone here is a first time parent, except me. Why would you come to a class about it if you’ve already done it at least once before? I can answer that one easily. Does any parent ever really feel like they know what they are doing? I can admit this and not only to myself. I’m not worried about what other people think. I’m here in the first place, right?

‘Ok, ladi… everyone, we’ll finish it here this evening, see you next week.’ She almost forgot me again.

After the class Antonia approaches me. I tend to get a lot of uneasy looks from the women here (not to mention their husbands) but Antonia seems to like me.

‘Hey Tony, want a lift?’

‘Thanks, Antonia. The busses don’t come frequently at this time of night.’

She smiles at me.

You wouldn’t expect it to look at her but Antonia drives a Hummer. From the first time I saw her climb out of it I was impressed. Yes, yes, climate change and so forth but it’s a nasty, big fuck-off car and she’s a nice, little welcoming woman. Few things in the world make me happier than these sorts of contradictions.

It’s warm inside like a womb and slightly stuffy. I wind down my window and gulp some air. Babies breathe inside the womb you know. They are basically breathing underwater. Like I said, anything is possible if you’re open to the idea.

‘Straight home or do you want to get dessert first?’

‘Dessert, while we can still blame it on pregnancy,’ I know this is what she wants to hear.


klehr.




LOST
One libido
Will respond to the call of a beautiful person
Looks like unsatisfied
If found please return to Miss R. Pennyfeather currently lying undressed under a tree in Glebe Park.

AMY WILSON



He's living life reluctantly,
when self respect seems false.
Apathy and love
are all he is dealt
by perception and revolving thought.

He understands futility
set against amity.
The foundation of his quandry!
With a push
comes a pull
and affection is put to rest.

He understands
that love is too great
in a heat where nothing lasts.
The unbearable them,
the impossible him.

Please bear the drag,
and don't let go.

SPARROWBOY


BLEEDING KNIVES

I was a bit sleepy so I didnt notice when the knife
started bleeding out of my stomach. Really its quite a scary thing to
have bleed out of your stomach. And I know what you're wondering, and
the answer is yes. Yes a literal cut, yes literal blood, yes
solidifying into a literal knife.

Luckily I had a friend who was a boy scout. He was very handsome. For every three of
my fingers you might have counted one of his. Sometimes he had a bad
haircut though.
We used to sit on the loungeroom floor. Not to play boardgames, if thats what you were thinking.

He took my knife and gave it to his scout leader.

He had a nose like Drazic from Heartbreak high. Which I used to hear as "jurassic"
and so my scouting friend's nose always made me think of dinosaurs. It
was great. Once he threw up in my parents green house.

When my cut healed it left a scar which was pink for a little while and then became
white and then faded a little bit. A lover I had when I was thirty six
kissed it almost three times. Sometimes I pick the peeling skin off the
soles of my feet. Dead beetles frighten me even more than live beetles.
I wonder if beetles have ghosts?

EADIE NILSEN


GLACIAL BEAUTY, PART ONE

It wasn’t much of a morning, dark and bitter and rancid, with a cold
mildewy wind like the breath of a dead witch. Wilbur Schön shivered and
pulled his shawl closer around him. His daughter would still be
sleeping, sprawled on the horsehair mattress in her room. He wished he
was at home, stoking the fire perhaps, with some bread on the toasting
fork, but instead he was traipsing through the heath, the hem of his
dress dragging on the ground while the dank air tugged at his nose and
whispered filthy secrets to him.

“Why did John have to meet me here?” Wilbur muttered in response to the wind. He looked ahead through the greasy mist to see a man standing on the crest of the hill in a black frock-coat and riding boots. No sign of a horse.

Jonathan Grimgram had employed Wilbur for two years, ever since he’d made his flight from Germany, avoiding a bizarre assassination plot over his scientific secrets. The employment was of much lesser prestige than the work he’d been doing previously - studies of anatomy and chemical combinations, as well as exciting new developments. Now he helped with Mr Grimgram’s plant collection, dye extraction and acid solutions for his work. Mr Grimgram was an artist, thought Wilbur with some disdain. He had the artistic temperament, but not the solid work ethic to match it. At first he’d delighted in having Wilbur around, finding his unusual attire somewhat amusing, but their relationship had soured for no apparent reason, other than the green fairy filling Mr Grimgram’s glass on an evening. The sizzle of dissolving sugar cubes became a constant reminder to Wilbur that it was best if he picked up his feet and returned home - before the violent temper began.

Did Mr Grimgram, in his drunken fog, think that Wilbur was his estranged wife, a harridan, a shrew? He thought nothing of raising a hairy hardened hand to the other man’s shoulder blades or face. Sometimes Wilbur was thankful for his corset, protecting his sides from some of the artist’s lower blows.

In any case, he felt that he and Glacielle had nowhere else to go. His English still wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t as if he was very trusted. Many people seemed to consider him either a loose woman, or a sodomite, as opposed to in his home country, where they took no issue with him. Glacielle had pleaded with him to start dressing as was his position, his status, but when he put on the trousers and shirt she proffered, he felt naked and exposed, uncomfortable. It was cold not to be shrouded in layers of chemise, petticoat, dress and shawl, and he felt, bizarrely, as if he were actually wearing someone else’s clothes. He put the thought on his mind, and began instead to wonder why Jonathan had called him to the top of the hill, early in the morning.

‘To talk...,’ Wilbur thought. ‘That’s what he said. Yeah right.’

Mr Grimgram raised a hand and called him.

“Wilbur! Thou kommst!”

“Warum sind sie am die berg, Grimgram?” Wilbur replied. “Es ist zu fröh und...aber...warum?”

“English please,” Jonathan Grimgram continued wearily. “If a loathsome unbecoming old bitch like you is going to come to the queen’s fair country, the least we can ask of you is that you speak her language.”

“Aber Sie hat Deutsche familie, und einer Deutsche mann...” Wilbur continued hopelessly. It was too early for English, his brain wasn’t working, just sloshing backwards and forwards like a pea soup.

“I told you English!” Grimgram yelled, grabbing Wilbur by the shoulders roughly. “Why did you even come here if you can’t speak the bloody language!”

“I try Mr Grimgram,” Wilbur said. “I stand up this morning, and thinking why he ask me to come so early, but I do not know! Why...why you ask me coming here?”

“I’m so tired of you,” Jonathon said, his words dripping with contempt and weariness. “I’m so very, very tired of you.”

He shoved Wilbur, who stumbled and fell backwards onto the heath. For the first time, instead of resignation, Wilbur felt fear, a fear that heightened when Mr Grimgram, rage in his eyes, grabbed him and pushed him onto his front. His face in the heather, mud in his eyes, Wilbur froze when he felt Grimgram’s hand pulling up his skirt, expecting to be raped.

“Sie sollen nicht!” Wilbur cried, feeling pre-emptively violated, but he only felt the artist’s weathered hand push higher to prod at his corset. It was a good one, steel boned and wasp waisted, although he didn’t lace it nearly as tightly as a lady would.

“Why the fuck do you have to wear this stupid thing?”

Wilbur tried to get up, but Grimgram was a lot stronger than him and much heavier.

“Take it off.”

“What?” Wilbur said, finally managing to find the English word. “What are you doing, please....bitte, what the hell are you doing? You....you...sheizenkopf! You...dikkes teufel!”

“You heard me,” the voice of Jonathan Grimgram came again. “Take that bloody stupid thing off. You’re not in a fashion plate. Take it off if you want to live.”

Wilbur’s hands fumbled at the front of the garment, his fingers trembling in fear, finally managing to separate the busk. It wasn’t exactly easy taking a corset off while still clothed. His arm felt like it wanted to dislocate.

“It’s off?” Grimgram said, and Wilbur nodded. Was this merely a cruel way to stop his effeminate sartorial habits? Or was he going to be buggered brutally on the heath, with no one to know or care about what had happened to him?

He struggled vainly for another minute, and then suddenly felt a hot stab of pain in his shoulder. Wilbur screamed in agony. He reached his hand behind him, trying to feel what had happened. With much scrabbling, he felt something embedded in him - the point of an intaglio tool. The point. Of a double ended tool 8 inches long.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck oh fuck!” Wilbur screamed hopelessly, taking his hand away and realising the palm was slick with his own blood, which had stained much of the way up his sleeve. “WARUM! FICKEN SIE! Ah....”

It was too late; through dimming vision, Wilbur saw Jonathan Grimgram walking away, pulling off and discarding his stained doeskin gloves.

LOUISA GIFFARD



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