on the news a man strangled his mother for telling him off she told him off for being drunk and he strangled her knocked her down and kicked her until she was dead.
afterward he went out to play the pokies for a whole week with her money, $20 000 of her money which I imagine she worked very hard for.
he's in gaol now, now it's a very sad story.


I was in primary school when I choked my first and only girl it was only for a little bit a few seconds with my rat-paw hands around her very thick, pink-orange neck, she was the colour of biscuits and sunburn.
I can't tell you why and no one saw, or they did but were surprised and she was surprised and I was surprised.
her mouth was open like a fish when you pull it out of the water her mouth opened and closed in little spasms her eyes where big.
I can't tell you why but I did sometimes it's like that you don't need a reason.


I'll put my mind to it - he was in his twenties so his mum can't have been that old.
she wasn't Norman Bates' frail old sweet mother, she didn't smell like lavender and she didn't wear cardigans.
she had no walking stick and she didn't wear tan stockings gone baggy at the ankle.
I've seen mothers like her - they wear tracksuits and their hair is short and sometimes they dye it.
She had him young and she's worked hard and yelled at him in shopping centres, making his name hard and pointed maybe his name was something like
"Jay-sun!" or
"Day-ved!" or
"My-cool!"
there were lines around her eyes and she was starting to roll at the belly and her tits were saggy but that happened years ago when she put them into the mouths of her babies, she put the milk of her body into the mouths of her babies, and her eyes weren't lined then and she might have smiled a little but felt sad, sad, sad while she put the milk of her body into her son's mouth, the mouth of her baby.


I've seen pokies but I've never played them my mum's never played them and my dad's never played them.
I had a boyfriend, once, who played them he had a steadily growing belly and long legs with broken knees.
He took me to the Clubs with the Pokies and the Bar and the Cover Band and his friends played pool and he played the pokies sitting there on a stool smiling and drinking beer, smiling and slotting coins into the machine, smiling and I smiled back.
He said he loved me and he did he loved me like a mother.
I don't know what I was thinking I didn't like him much he was always smiling and saying stupid things and his friends bored me and he was always taking me to the Clubs where I didn't much fit in with the work-rough men raw as mincemeat from the sun.
I didn't respect him but, it was okay, I didn't much respect myself, sayings like that have become cliche but new meaning is given to them when you're sitting in the Clubs with the Pokies ringing around your ears and the man who claims you as his own sitting on a stool and smiling, smiling, smiling.
He loved me and all a girl wants is a little love.


what do mean enjoy what makes them dizzy with pleasure what do they love what are they excited about what hurts them and what doesn't?
I peer into men - I mean some men don't bog me in semantics or we'll never escape - and see beer and cars, and pokies.
money and survival.
I can imagine him - he liked his beer, he liked his mates, he lived at home, his mum's voice cuts him open but he loved his beer, he loved feeling foggy and warm, he loved relaxing and all he wants is to uncoil his raw hot body someplace comforting doesn't he have a right?
his mum can make his name all hard and pointed and he's had enough of hearing and there she is with her voice without end always talking asking questions nag, nag, nag the old hag with her nagging firing little barbs at him and it hurts, stupid bitch, it hurts and can't he have a break, doesn't he have a right?
he made her mouth open like a fish when you pull it out of water he'd never seen her eyes so wide it was almost funny she looked funny and his hands felt bigger than ever and her neck smaller than ever her body was so fragile and weak he couldn't help it he pushed her over and it was fun, he knew it was bad but it was fun, he planted his shoe right in her guts and her eyes were red and bruises were blossoming on her thin weak neck.
he ploughed her belly with his feet his legs surging his legs unstoppable his legs a mass without end always moving motivated by something before language before sensation she coughed blood and wailed and he screamed and their voices were the same.
at some point, all the life went out of her, her blood stopped, her voice caught and finished.


what is the worst thing you've ever done?
I hardly remember choking that girl but I was very ashamed I was old enough to know better.
she never spoke to me again.
sometimes, you've just got to go somewhere where you don't have to think about it.


on the kitchen floor was the body she'd left behind.
how swollen it was, how broken and bleeding and undignified.
she was gone.
her hands were still.
all the while, her body grew and fermented, let loose the scent of dead things held back for so long, familiar and horrifying.
he was not thinking because such things are painful.