Anisha Pillarisetty
Anisha Pillarisetty writes about Simone Kennedy in Neoterica 2024.
1/ a fly on the wall, gone/before i can catch/a closer look at its
wings – a bit like a/heartbeat.
the things that help us fly, are often the things /that can destroy us.1
i google attachment styles,2 after we talk/& i know what i am/ before i /do the quiz. it tells me i have a disorganised/attachment/ avoiding / my childhood, but remembering/a glimpse of something/in the corner of my eye.
2/ we talk about memory/in sections, any body/ a vertebrae-ic/ story /that can break if you leave out a part/ the body is a branch covered in/ the foil of conversation, holding up/ our skin. our histories are different/ but they both bleed when they fall/ & break.
3/ we walk through the garden, but the grass is/ carpet. even on the other side
apple seeds weigh down the orchids/ what does the brain hold down/ what can we brush under.
4/ i imagine red leather arm rests are both comfortable &/ominous. i imagine the Tube even though I've never been. i remember/ taking the train with my mother. dreams
covering the day’s/ mistakes in a pale, worn/blue/i bridge the gaps by thinking of the smell of rivers if they dried up underground/i look at the maps3/they’ve never made sense to me. they are just coloured lines. you say, everything is a bit more on the surface there. not like other cities. home blooms differently, and disappears when you try and pluck it.
5/The bench is filled with habits some more close to the/bone. colours bleed into the fleshiness of memory, a decadent monster/eating time, like stone fruit swelling into
hazy summers in the opposite hemisphere to–
home is shadows at midday, a giant ear hiding in plain/sight,4 for listening to whispers that are no longer/there.
1/ at night time when a fly/starts to shake the silence/it seems like it’ll never/end. an infinity in the brain. a drone/that keeps zooming out until you can see the silver/in the moon.
6 /wrap around/and round the details/until the weightlessness of forgetting/is a feeling to hold
until it changes colour/like wool that changes texture & becomes/unfamiliar5/ the more you touch it/if only/bright, transparent pipes/could capture/the tick-tock of everything before it
leaves/like the sound of domesticated birds/with clipped wings, birds/that can’t
fly away6
7/ there are feelings that burn and burn/& the shops turn them into souvenirs/there is something eternally comforting about fake fur/the way it strokes against the skin/& threatens/to leave7/i meet people in their thirties/who are not troubled by life/& i wonder how many days they’ve spent/reliving the gaudy smell of magazines/in corner shops and waiting rooms/when everything turns to ashes/in the bright of eyes.
1 Written while reflecting on the end of Simone Kennedy, Maureen. Unpublished.
2 M. D. S Ainsworth, & J Bowlby, “An ethological approach to personality development” American Psychologist 46 (1991) 331-341.
3 See map of London Underground
4 Kennedy, S. Psychosocial Assets, 2014.
5 Kennedy, S. The Incomplete Hand of Love, 2017.
6 Kennedy, S. Soft tissue memory, 2004.
7 Kennedy, S. Rabbit/Duck, 2018.
Anisha Pillarisetty is a writer and journalist working and living on unceded Kaurna Yarta. She reports for ABC News in Adelaide, and has had creative non-fiction, poetry, features and reviews published by Liminal Mag, Mascara Literary Review, CityMag, InDaily and others. She also has a keen interest in community radio and has produced national current affairs program The Wire. Anisha’s creative writing has recently drifted between interrogating memory, family, and narratives that construct and seep through boundaries of power. She wrote ‘Lost and found in (mis)translation’, about artists Jazmine Deng and Shaye Dương, who featured in the group show Pendulum at Nexus Artspace, and ‘Inside the community drop-in centre putting lived experience first’, both published in CityMag.