Famous Reporter # 30 - poetry, Susan Austin: 'Melt-down'

SUSAN AUSTIN

Melt-down

          There is a pause in the monopoly game

as you watch in disbelief.

My features rapidly slip away,

body following a neat series of contortions,

skin and tissue sliding

          silently downwards

as I disintegrate into a sticky melt pool,

sucked up quickly by the thirsty floorboards.

A sickening silence as you try and comprehend.

          I know what this means -

Now when you walk all over me,

I won't feel a thing.

Susan Austin grew up in Maryborough, Queensland, and has been writing poetry since the age of eight. She has published poetry in the University of Queensland publications Semper and Heretical as well as The Fraser Coast Chronical and Green Left Weekly, for whom she also writes news and social issues articles. She studied Irish and American poetry in Dublin last year and has recently settled in Hobart, where she works as an occupational therapist and is active in the movements for social change.