The hairdresser’s confession

The hairdresser shaved the
back of my neck
and told me her recipe for
chicken vol au vents

it was the strangest thing

like nazis were
waiting for her in the carpark
and the future of
chicken vol au vents was in jeopardy

I didn’t need that sort of
responsibility

just a trim.

Night vision

His whole life
he has dreamed of
a Himalayan sunset

and now on a bus
20 miles from Pokhara
he is staring at the freckles
on the back of a stranger’s neck

they are a constellation not
unlike the southern cross
studding the night sky
of her nape
slender tanned familiar

and outside
Annapurna glows
impossible shades of
pink and red
and something nothing
like orange

and he is lost
in the night sky of
a stranger’s neck.

Decomposition

In paddocks cracked
and steep dam banks
beneath distorted
eaten limbs
pianos graze
on shifting dunes
of memory dust
and sunset hymns

out-of-tune
twisted twanged
broken keys
like old dogs’ teeth
they strike a chord
in this ruined scape

no chandeliers
or potraits hung
of Bach or ­­Brahms or Beethoven

their skewiff tunes ring out
across big skies and crusted scats
while old choughs
mourn the dying day
a tumbleweed opera
so perfect in decay.

Word of moth

In the marketing report
someone had written

key marketing strategy
goodwill
– word of moth

and though I knew
it was a typo
I wept
to think of moths

whispering kind words
into the ears of
strangers.

Solving the transport crisis

Tear up the freeways
and clearways
the tram tracks and taxi ranks
pave the cities with
polished linoleum

then with youthful
exuberance
and stockinged feet
we will glide
and glide and glide.

Surfacing

I will breathe for
you if you will breathe
for me

and we will be like scuba
divers in a sea
of false idols and broken
promises

if you will bring the flippers
i will bring the snorkel.

Best Australian Stories 2007

What a thrill it is to be included in The Best Australian Stories 2007, alongside some of this country's most accomplished short story writers: Cate Kennedy, Paddy O'Reilly, Frank Moorhouse, Peter Goldsworthy ... just to name a few.

It's particularly satisfying for me to see that a micro-story (only 470 words) can match it with more traditionally structured stoires. Anyway, I'll let you make up your own mind. Here is Hemingway's Elephants:

Hemingway's Elephants

I suppose I should have been more shocked to meet Ernest Hemingway on the Broadmeadows train — not least because he blew his brains out in 1961 — three years before I was even born — when Broadmeadows was just paddocks of Scotch thistles. You could tell he was embarrassed to see someone reading Men Without Women. This was 1988 — sixty years after its publication. It was published the same year my father was born on a kitchen table in Coburg. It reads like it was written yesterday.

‘I’m reading the elephant one,’ I said to Hemingway. ‘Do you remember the elephant one? We all read it at school. I bet you never dreamed they’d be reading it in schools after you were dead.’

Hemingway looked confused for a moment and then said, ‘Hills Like White Elephants?’ His voice was much higher than I’d imagined, but that could be a symptom of death.

‘Yes that’s the one. I’ve always liked stories about elephants. I especially like Kipling — The Jungle Book. There were several elephants in that one.’

‘I shot an elephant once,’ Hemingway said with a certain pride. ‘But it’s not really about elephants.’

‘But, it says here about the colour of their skin through the trees.’

‘Yes, but she’s talking about the hills. It’s about relationships. Not elephants.’

‘But hills don’t have skin,’ I said dubiously. ‘Why mention the skin if it’s not about elephants?’

‘Because it’s suggestive of elephants,’ Hemingway said. ‘It’s symbolic, don’t you see?’

‘Well, why mention elephants at all then? It seems a little strange — if they’re not real. Aren’t you just disappointing all the people who like to read about elephants?’

‘Quite,’ was all that Hemingway said.

‘Quite, indeed!’

It was quiet for a moment, apart from the rhythmic clickety clack of the train. Hemingway looked at his watch and scratched nervously at his beard. ‘What about The Killers?’ I asked, not letting him off the hook. After all, this elephant fraud was a man who’d won a Nobel prize for literature.

‘What about The Killers?’ Hemingway said, sounding agitated.

‘Well, is it about real killers? It seems to be more about sandwiches. Are the sandwiches the killers? I mean are they symbolic?’

‘What sandwiches? Hemingway was being downright aggressive now.

‘He orders sandwiches. You wrote it — how can you forget the sandwiches? Are they like the elephants? Are they just symbolic sandwiches — is that what you’re saying?’

Hemingway was wiping his brow with a handkerchief as the train pulled into North Melbourne station. He was out of the door in a flash — swept up by the rush hour crowd — his camouflage hunting jacket fading into the jungle of commuters.

I didn’t see Hemingway on the Broadmeadows train again. I looked for him everyday, though. I had some serious questions about the opening page of A Farewell To Arms.