Welcome to Phoenix’s world-changing Salon

Blank pages have always intim­id­ated me And I hes­it­ate to describe minu­tiae again Lumps and aches, dull anchor points into limb And earth and stretched muscle when I crave flight Gift me air. Gift me uplift. Gift me weight­less­ness. Kiss me into feathers.

It is a lynch­pin of my life Out­sider on the inside Yet I slide under radar Designed to trap my fellow Queers, gender­freaks, Col­on­ised souls. I infilt­rate priv­ileged spaces with my passing. I come out over and over Dis­com­fit the com­fort­able I may look white But my…

A small slice of Europe. Café Lorca Makes me crave huevos de gamba and strong black coffee Il Papiro whis­per­ing to me of Firenze and the old bridge across the Arno look­ing up towards Ponte alle Grazie Book­shops that laugh at me because I’m not in the Marais and throw…

A child gashes their foot on a sharp screw, unat­ten­ded. Her mother com­pla­cent, absent. A man mis­in­ter­prets a word here and next thing you know, fur­niture raised over­head, glass tinkles as it’s smashed, draw­ers flung across a room leave gaping wounds in a chest  — and…

And it turns out that’s unfor­giv­able Because I’m now writ­ing lines to you in my head Lying in the dark in my bed It does­n’t matter that I sent you other words Sur­repti­tious in the social stream Oscar Wilde’s hand soft on Walt Whit­man’s knee Let us be to each other…

I am writ­ing lost love let­ters to ampersands, my favour­ite — with its cur­licues in arcane typefaces, it peeks out at me from designer invit­a­tions & grungy res­taur­ant names & I play seek. I invent reas­ons to unfurl my ampersands & sneak our way into…

AND here i am again sit­ting in a seat in the sky rocky, knocked against the seat­belt, think­ing how peace­ful and my three-and-a-half year old wait­ing at the gate, think­ing not ready to go, not this time, as we glide down and i see your match­box cars wend­ing through…

my clothes don’t match today such a simple thing to turn con­fid­ent strides into frumpy shrink­ing such a long way from flow­ing ochre silks or scar­let coats; my mind hunches in con­cert, nar­rowed, pinched, as if the scope of thought per­mit­ted dir­ectly cor­rel­ates to style…

When we were young we watched incan­des­cent flick­er­ing images of people rising like a sea from train sta­tions, koy­aan­isqatsi in the Val­halla cinema on Glebe Point Road late at night and we swore we would never become one of these face­less creatures on escal­at­ors, on…

My sister unknow­ingly let me in on a secret today. In our family, there are no dimin­ut­ive nick­names of affec­tion for grand­par­ents and great-grand­par­ents, merely a rollcall of pat­ronyms: Grandma Ber­sten, Grandma Levine, Grandma Bass.

I am not entirely cer­tain how any of us make it through unscathed, what with spit­ting frying pans just out of reach and the tempta­tion of round­abouts revers­ing cars in drive­ways epi­dem­ics from exotic loc­ales the drunk driver who slams into the rear of the car…

Here’s how I ima­gined it: Take one house, prefer­ably custom-built; add care­ful wrought-iron fix­tures and a wooden spiral stair, ceil­ing-high book­shelves, a garden filled with lav­ender and wis­teria. Place in a rolling yard back­ing onto rain­forest, a sand­stone path…