As part of the Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowship programme, Ruby Hillsmith worked on Little Islands, Dead Sea, a multi-genre project exploring emotion, memory and psychiatry. This excerpt, 'three approaches to mem*ry', interrogates the foibles/fables/fractures/failures inherent to her own practice of memory.
1. i feel the hot/shock of the silver hook
and nurse it for a little while
before i even check—(which bastard’s
reeling in the fishing line?)
and that’s just the curse of mem*ry:
sometimes it turns the gut
before the throat
before the eye
(that one delinquent pupil always seems to trail behind)
and now i want to give up history,
the pit of broken glass
i drag my fingers through
(and then revise, each
tiny prick a patient under mem*ry’s super/vision)
to get a job on neighbours: chief amnesiac,
a girl and her huge plot hole.
2. i cross the border without breaking
mem*ry’s autocratic state.
the body keeps the score, and
melbourne’s nice, it’s just another place
to drag the chariot,
to blather on and on before
old visions come in threes—still—
there is the mosquito bite i pick until it bleeds,
currents gripping me
(((parentheses))),
mangroves twisting like a mess of snakes towards the sun.
i hire a dodgy contractor to start the demolition—
he says grief is an expan$ive lot to be developed
into westconnex and reams of wet cement
(that you can barely press your palms against
without a fine)
3. mem*ry arrives, again———(((as if it bears repeating)))
you: impudent in a cowboy hat,
worn tracksuit
dyed a fetching shade of pink—
granted—a
mem*ry has to change a bit each time it’s resurrected,
so you’ve burned through all your outfits pretty quick—
and all at once I beg the past
to skim my chest
without incision,
indifferent as a bar of motel soap—
(((but))) suddenly the faucet turns
(((and))) someone’s calling down the hall
(((like))) slash the ribbons, hurry on
short of a witness———mem*ry’s gone———