a short play in which your beauty products gather in a pool of moonlight on the tiles of your bathroom floor to praise their goddess

a short play in which your beauty products gather in a pool of moonlight on the tiles of your bathroom floor to praise their goddess

toothbrush:    to sip bacteria from mouth chalice

                        what a waste of holy water –

                        spitting dredges in the sink

wax strip:       o i shall till her lush meadows

                        entomb each daisy in my body

                        enrapture each follicle

cleanser:         delta of blackheads on her nose

                        is my nile, i wash her festering

                        gemstones with reverence

lash curler:     orbit the many fingered moons

                        i am an astronaut intimately

                        acquainted with her gravity

                       

                         

5:59am

I wrote this poem and published it in the wom*ns edition of my university's newspaper, Honi Soit around this time last year. It's also where I got the title of this blog from. I found it again recently and thought I would share it here:


5:59am

this morning’s foul, bright breath leaves
a landscape on my bedroom wall;
lipped orange in tungsten glow. spores of sunlight
sew carcinogens, a
microcosmic waltz
across the stretch of my bare skin.

this body
is hardly evocative:
it lies
slackened and soft,
broad as a baleen whale. occupies,
bristles linen like the waves.

the time will come for stranger convulsions;
cereal and suitcases
laid out under my eyes.

until then,
remain
enveloped
in this morning's photon miasma

where
ribs softly undulate
and pores burst open like windows.



by Perri Roach

Two Poems

crescents

someone has scalped the moon— disfigured! her face

has landed in my garden.

it is sprawled across my freshly cut lawn, translucent

and sticky as milk. my poor daisies lie crushed

underneath the weight of that freshly planted

easter island head. she’s an enigmatic monolith,

with her acne pocked cheeks and those eyes

still open; like two astronomic sunken whirlpools.

last night i lay down on her asteroid

dappled brow, just to see

what she was staring at. i saw the ragged skein

of her grinning jaw, still hinged on the stars.

These days

I wake up with my mouth open

like a baby bird. I take

my pills after breakfast

and always remember

to pluck

the hairs

between my eyebrows

like daisies.

Arrange them in a vase,

leave them on the windowsill.

(These were originally published in the University of Sydney arts literary journal, ARNA.)