Issue 1: Thomas Lee

Drums

you chill out by the pool

obtaining a wart or a crucifix

little boys offering you sandpaper and gel

separating the lines of an email with a razorblade

you come up with a song about potatoes

and how you used to look away when I took one from the shop

only to tell our friends about

how I’d rest it on an old jar and let it grow

and turn green

the dense flux of crickets is amplified by the stillness

mum pulls apart your old pink tank top

the cold shower, a shaken’ bake

handsome horses rocket by the bullet-proof glass

no doubt pausing somewhere beyond sight

to snort and consider our wedding

fireworks are projected onto the castle wall

the grass seems to flow down the hill like water

outrageously, the sentences I remember from the last few months

eat their way out of the fog

no surprises there

just men with old lead tongues, black capes

lining up for a shave or a tour of the lighthouse

pieces of you break off from my lashes as I blink

swallowing with dedication the milky dose

putting out this weeks trash

tying my laces so they don’t come undone

how did these cuts come to be on my hand

why can’t I eject myself out of remembering

like a beetle deciding to fly

Branches

a man walks into a room

in what ways is this autobiographical, he thinks

poor walls let in the sound of traffic

doom frozen on the computer

an old glass of ginger ale, mint leaves black

peace for a while as he reads the paper

then his thoughts converge with lust and the need to hear an ABBA song

details on a note reading

her impression intensified by the words she chose

champagne, rheumatoid arthritis, bluster

there was a brass plaque

outside the surgery, distortion

you’re a thin black needle

or a card with no picture on the surface surface

Thomas Lee completed an honours thesis on W. G. Sebald and John Ashbery at the University of Technology Sydney in 2006. He spent his childhood on a farm in central west New South Wales. He now lives in Sydney.

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