melbourne is a patient

By Blossom Hibbert

Melbourne is a patient, still in the confusion

of a drug after our operation. At the peak of this very human tenderness, I go for a walk through carlton gardens with my inner dialogue self consciously hanging out my body—unwilling to stuff itself back inside the confines of a dirty gut. While the dimpled nectarine sunshine plays around me & i liberate ruptured flowers of their green handcuffs, i secretly forget i am meant to be finding a job in this city right now, instead of ambling from pavement to garden—I think I was thinking my new book of poems in simple type on old brown paper; marvelous& tough might be the answer, but it’s not, it’s just like tossing mint leaves into the big blue sky and expecting them to float like a kite.
 

 
Do you recall the gullies I went through, trying to sever my body of poetry? And how they stitched it back? The surgeon’s heavy hand of burden; his smell of a million hot beef dinners, all fountains just sounds, tufts, wearing a navel on the outside—spring onions growing atop the windowsill—new & young vegetables, cos I’ve only been in this mangled city for two weeks. How polite; to drown and barely lift an arm, wash up on the shore of Melbourne, where the people talk to your starfish encrusted ear, &here you might become someone who is difficult to lose, and you might feel so baylike in your own room till you snooze—tentacled, opal water pouring over you; a waterfall of gardenia flowers, like cream pies, O god sweet morning of congressmen—I’ll give you my freedom, only only only—if you unleash me on a slope…
 

 
The maggot eyed noon tonight is all iris—smartened by the wine i’ve been inhaling, giving my lungs a bath, wearing these flouncy black trousers with diamonds on them from the west preston op shop, wearing tight white turtleneck vest—feeling rock and rolled. My city map curls into something military as I learn it off by heart on my floor, buy myself a bike as white as dominoes, cycle into the central business district and back so many times that words like russel street and bourke street feel like they’ve been given ample opportunity to finish me off, but I guess they like seeing me soar, and I learn that London learns to Ginsburg which leads to Brunswick Strt—where I work at my desk, and sleep in my bed, and the summer lacerates her long wings on my shut blinds, cos I’m busy now—leave me alone.

 
 
I listen to the very hungry caterpillar CD at night when i cant sleep which is either all the time or never at all, I found it sitting quietly outside a school. Lately, the nights are so sweet with insomnia you should probably sip it, &I wake with a rhythmic jolt, as sudden as the universe, cos I’ve forgotten what country I’m in, and it feels like waking up on a very high glass floored building, it feels like a three foot axe leaning on the hangman’s shoulder, cutting deep through december’s thick neck. It’s a concave oblivion wrapped in the silk of vegetable skins. It’s time to make soup from cheap vegetables again, time to pace around the kitchen in the almost light with a smile, listening to the nightclub below, where people eat kebabs and dance.

 
 
At dusk on elvin street the rainbow parakeets sit on the typewriter shop. I go in & ask if he wants an apprentice. A stare from the girl who wants to start a new life, who needs a new trade—but the tone in her voice is jam and words are bread, and he says he’s alright—thanks, he’s full but—wait—sir—I’ve already planned my life in yr shop, and the way I was gonna walk here every morning, & I’ve already titled a poem ‘parakeets while I’m on shift’ —so I leave in glumness and search for a new job, but instead of actually doing this I just go on the dole and when I’m through with one of the weekly appointments I walk to abbotsford convent; where the lazy countryside greets the wicked city and departs almost immediately, with sheep grazing like how there are only holes on one side of the recorder.

 
 
A poet pours the ocean into her pocket, however many fish there are it doesn’t matter—her heart makes an unbreakable aquarium, men with empty hands pass by, like long rain in deep mud followed by sunshine, like building a cracked skin of brown sails, like sitting in the convent bakery with a fruit pie and the pale crystal library of tears is shut, a pigeon comes to visit, I feed the pigeon, we sit together in half silence, he eats the crumbs of my love, I want to bathe his bad feet in aloe vera.
 

 
In the convent, you hear the wind before you feel it. I spoil the corridors of the top floor and onto the balcony and tell the grass he needs a haircut && past all the cells which used to house good virgins & now house bad dirty whoreish artists and they smile at me like i have a studio there, and my life plan changes cos all i want is a beautiful studio at abbotsford convent O please—lord? A priest looks at me in an ugly way and I understand because I’ve also woken up and looked at myself in the mirror and felt shame. I get the bus from johnson street to the other side of town cos it’s such a long road& its 40 degrees out, and raining bullets which steam like laundry behind
candlelight.

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​Blossom Hibbert has a pamphlet, suddenly, it’s now, published by Leafe Press. Her work has appeared in places such as Litter, International Times, Anthropocene & Buttonhook Press. She is a poet from nowhere in particular.