JOHANNA AITCHISON’s volume of poems, A Long Girl Ago, has just been shortlisted for the Montana Awards. Fingers (and legs) crossed girls and boys!


       Twice a Day Until Finished

       Can’t wait to climb into a bottle of perfume
       from a small shop in a back alley in Paris.

       She drops coins in the machine, presses select.
       That was the thing to help shake off hell!

       We were going to stalk Patsy across Lyall Bay,
       but now we’d just stop in the big, red balloon.

       He’s staring out at the steps of dunce sky
       wishing to be other than a strip of time.

       “Okey dokey little smokey!” She carries off
       her dress like a two month old baby.


       Miss Dust Checks Out

       My body is a loose sky, shaking at the beetroot
       shocks of fall trees around the next corner.

       The shitty beach punches stone bruises
       into my dreams. My mind is wracked

       with corrugated cardboard, poking a tongue out.
       My dead friend flips over in her third best dress.

       We stomp fire into thoughts of sky, mutter
       languages we can’t speak. We are waving

       goodbye to guests we are dying to meet,
       carving our names into hotel swimming pools.