Johanna's BlogFiona 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. Her first collection, Knuckled, is forthcoming in 2010.
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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?"
"Chicken or beef?"
"Chicken or beef?"
