A brief description of an ambiguously aged woman who liked to stand in the sun

She stood surveying summer with one hand on her hip and some shadows in her sockets; a full, semi-exposed bust seeping out of a plain black bikini. The fag drooped out of a downward mouth corner (left and down, down low and left) like a strip of plastic cheese. It melted onto her face. She had a leathery stomach; darkened flaps hung over broken down muscle, a wrinkled cocoon for the organ of her post-mastication.

She was the kind of woman who filed skin cancers like toenails. She went to the tired local beautician each week with the newest incarnation of a sticky magazine subscription. And she lay there, thick and naked, whilst some pale thing rubbed oils heavily over her skin, she lay and willed cheap, violent pulsations into the rhythms of their oddly agamous neutrality. She had seen ten thousand furnaces of sun (bright sun, always bright); felt it heavily encase her, the porcelain layers of youth stripped off.

It was nice today, in her kaftan with a moistened fag. It was nice in the sun.

This little mumma appears in the current issue of conconversation, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music publication.

Skinhead

His flesh was so thin it was almost non-flesh. It hung, or rather, was suspended, loosely from his skull like a deflated balloon taped to a mail box, rendered virulent in the sorry wake of someone or others festivities.

The City Circle

They were busy in the mornings, those armies of gray.

They departed concrete houses. They nodded at their neighbours. They got into automobiles. They drove places. They got out of automobiles. They went to train stations and bus stops (various). They bought tickets. They listened to sensible songs on their ipods. They were important people, people in grey. Sometimes they wore a tie with a pattern. That was usually a joke. They were jokesters. They were pranksters. They sometimes sent a humorous email. They had a special email folder titled 'humorous', for those. They arrived at offices and had desks with little plastic containers in the top right hand corners. They called out to their secretaries and asked for the business cards to be reordered. They put the cards in the containers. They held their pens importantly at big desks with leather chairs. They nodded sincerely. Sometimes they nodded insincerely.

Then, in the latest afternoons, their brains fell apart, like bits of cake left out in the rain. They went to the train station, or bus stop, and sat next to someone with a crayola face and a bag of tricks. They thought about this person. This person probably rides a scooter on weekends and designs web pages, they thought. This person probably wears green hi-top converse shoes on Casual Fridays. This person probably is very lazy every morning.

If I was there, I would have felt the burning sensation on my shoulders.

Periodically, I search for short clips of gasoline explosions. I like to watch (with volume muted) the results of the leak; the thick red smoke as it propels forcefully upward and outward, and the flames which lay beneath the surface, waiting to puncture it and seep quickly out. The sky is slowly eaten up.

I don't think that this habit stems from some sort of carnal lust for destruction. I think it's more about the finality of things.