Susan Stranks, Family Fun: Things to make, do, and play, 1979
(via mythologyofblue)Arterial, by Michelle Dicinoski
When the suburb sleeps, this bed hums
with the quakes of midnight trucks
that speed west two streets away.
For weeks I thought it was me—
some spasm to do with the heart.
While you slept, I lay here
counting beats, debts, receipts.
It’s these old houses. All tongue and groove
they move and shift in increments, sink
on their stumps, inhale and exhale the heat.
Doors drop on their hinges and refuse to close.
Tonight, late, our flatmate brings his woman home
and the tremors come again—
paperbacks shake on their shelves,
windowpanes rattle and
silverware, girlish, shivers in its drawers.
Beside me, you sleep
moving only your breath, your blood,
your fierce heart. Beside me, you sleep
as the dark house shifts around us.
Spring cleaning
It was the second proper spring day so far, winter weather having overlapped its calendar perimeters. Heading into town without a coat on my shoulders for the first time, I noticed how buoyant was the collective mood.
M. backyard-blitzed the rear courtyard with a surprise makeover: the ivy was clipped back, the weeds (by now the height of large toddlers) were pulled, a new edging planted, and seedlings housed. Before that, in preparation for a pending house-guest, we had been tending to other tasks around the home. Doors open: sweeping, dusting, airing the linen.
But the activities also had a tint of ritual. I understood, finally, the rich sentiment and the seasonal practicality behind ‘spring cleaning’: regeneration, opening up, preparing for a different way of living over the coming months.
