Content Warnings (click to reveal)
Discussed: Suicide, domestic violence
B‒Grade Narrative
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Brett is saying something about moving on. All I can feel is my face shrinking under the beauty mask, as I lie here listening, head on the pillow. I can’t really move my mouth to speak, so I let him go on about his need to be free. No ties. How I fail to see the big picture. I passed the screen test, he knows I’m always happy in the support role, but there never was any room for me in his big picture. He fills every closeup, every scenario is about him. Still, I didn’t expect to be written out of the story. We were meant for each other. He promised me a new part in ‘Living the Dream’. He was kidding me along, playing the hero, when all the time it was just a run-through. The angled light from the bathroom casts a blue filter. Suits my mood. All I can think of now are the pills I’ve been collecting, the note I’ll leave him — Just death is true.
— after Darren Sylvester 2006 ‘Just Death is True’ chromogenic print
90 x 120cm. Collection Monash Gallery of Art, Victoria
Domestic
Willem de Kooning ‘Women IV’ 1950-55
Brush strokes sweep violent as a fist,
hot flesh yields under his heaving breath.
Wild eyed she shrinks from the first swipe,
as paint thick with rage is dragged across
the canvas, her giant body splayed open.
He serves raw colour in a side-way swing,
paints his blow-up goddess out of sight.
Outside, his real-life Venus has no fear
of annihilation, as mother, wife, lover,
moll, she welcomes these powerful years.
The artist flaying his demons, danger
released in the expressive swing of a brush.
Falling Star
She has stepped down from the starlet roles of the thirties. The queen of mystery dramas has left the shadow play of black and white for the celluloid glow of technicolor. Gone are the power shoulders, the famous swagger. Where is the Joan we knew and feared, the woman in control, the one who always wins? Now she plays Ringmaster, in top hat and tights. Falls for the dazzling high-wire artist, cracks the whip in a circus on the ropes in this who-dunnit with no prizes for guessing — neglected daughter gets her own back on a spree of vengeance—. Such strength and ingenuity from a mild-mannered sylph. So unbelievable only a kid at a matinee would buy the improbable plot.
They film on moonlit evenings, where she seeks out the shadows. A sympathetic fold of a curtain softens the raw truth of the spotlight. The camera is kind to an ageing star, uses a soft lens to frame those large eyes, lips taut from the last face lift. Eyebrows lined in an eternal look of fury as she watches her bright star fade to a twinkle.
—after Berserk, Colombia Pictures 1966
Brenda is a Wiradjuri writer and performer. Her poetry and short fiction appear in edited anthologies and journals both on-line and in print, including Westerly, Mascara, Spineless Wonders, Anthology of Best Australian Prose Poems 2021 (Melbourne University Press) Best Australian Poems 2022 (Australian Poetry). She has performed her memoirs and microfiction in several Sonic City Sydney events and won International Awards for her Short Films: Best Script Prize (London Independent Short Films 2022) and the New York Arthouse Film Fest Award in 2023.
Locative Magazine 