Allison Browning is a writer and freelance editor with a mildly abnormal obsession for natural bodies of water. She was born in small town Perth and now resides in Melbourne. Her work has been published in lots of cubbyholes in both London and Australia where she has paraded as a poet, reviewer, fiction writer and journalist.

She is a co-founder of Melbourne’s Read You Bastards readings nights and is currently assistant editor of The Lifted Brow. You can find more slices of her work at her home and be privy to her more informal tidbits and musings.

This is how
By Allison Browning

This is how cities are built empires made. Things done and undone and

This is how it is to be done, how I do it.

This is how maybe we

   There are rules; ways of dealing, mechanisms.

This is how you choose and don’t apologise.

This, is how order happens: in the making of beds, the sorting of laundry, the pulling of weeds, the doing of things, in busyness. In not thinking.

   There are soapy dishes, folded pages, half
   written flashing screens, monuments, maps,;
   states, distance.

This is how sanity happens: in glasses of wine, in books, in not drinking at parties, in sideways glances at what we were. Believing it to be nonsense.

This is how things are done—in dinner, a typewriter, a scent, a distraction, an excuse, a guttural sigh, a book, a table, a home cooked meal, a turned back, a moment of nothing. Of everything. Of we. Of I — then undone.

This is how:

This is how:

This is how you undo moments, unpick stitching.

This is how you build your cardboard castles to house your million wounds.

This is how I forget.

Pushlished in The Diamond & the Thief - June 10

These gods
by Allison Browning

These gods
are combing the sea floor
and before long they’ll find me out,
realise I cheated fate
and will wake me up.

Pushlished in The Diamond & the Thief - November 10

Fuel
By Allison Browning

You asked to stop there for a can of coke, you needed to piss and the tank was empty so I pulled in. I stood by the bowser pumping gas to fuel dreams set on fire years before and you said to the attendant that you'd been short changed.

If only you knew the truth in that.

The tyres were near-bald and paint job robbed by rust and we were there ten metres apart, sliding doors between us and I was standing watching your mouth move.

You were telling the attendant that there were not enough coins—the change was wrong—and you were pleading with your eyes with one hand in your front pocket looking casual and honest.

And you looked at me through the glass and back at him and you picked at lint from your stained pull over.

I watched your mouth.

You were hoping like fuck that he'd give you that two dollar coin so you could walk through those sliding doors, flip that piece, lay it on the dash, shove your feet up and feel just a little richer for all those years we'd spent.

Pushlished in The Diamond & the Thief - December 09