Fiona Wright

b. 1983, Australia

Fiona Wright is a Sydney poet, whose work has been published journals and antholgies in Australia, Asia and the USA. Her work was included in Best Australian Poems 2008 (Black Ink) and the Toilet Doors Project (2004), and she was runner-up in the 2008 John Marsden National Young Writers Award. In 2007, she was awarded an Island of Residencies placement at the Tasmania Writers’ Centre, developing a sequence of poems about Australians in Sri Lanka. Fiona was Project Assistant with the Red Room Company from 2004 - 2008, and works as an Editor at Giramondo Publishing.

747

I've heard that air hostesses

get paid cosmetic leave

if their skin becomes contentious

and the resulting pustuled pimples

can't be magically made over

with a blob of black eyeliner

into a beauty spot.

The march, pink-lipped, high-heeled, dry-cleaned

down the narrow aisles

and I can't help but think of a cloned army,

robotic, ice-maiden cold, and deadly

advancing behind their drink-cart artillery

ready to clobber any caught

smoking in the shoebox toilets.

Their incessant battle cry echoes and amplifies:

"Chicken or beef?"

Projects

Toilet Doors Poetry 2004