Skip to content

Hot Desk Extract: three approaches to mem*ry

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.

Share this content

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 threesstill

 

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———

Stay up to date with our upcoming events and special announcements by subscribing to The Wheeler Centre's mailing list.

Privacy Policy

The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.