Good, clean feminine hygiene suite (feat. Rex Hunt)
I ♥ bad mothers
I love bad mothers they are
So special like pandora bracelets
They are so much rarer than bad dads
Because what do you call a bad father?
Just dad or you don't
Call at all
Good mums are mcdonalds
Dotted along suburban freeways
Plucked eyebrow raised arches
In the rearview as they answer soon
We’ll be there soon sweetie
No, I prefer bad mums, a delicacy like bad hens
Who sit on their bad eggs or cows who
Let their milk dry up, shells and split
Yolks trailing through their arse hair
Presented on a platter
Udder-up, legs akimbo
Tits untouched by gravity or mouths
I love bad mums how Ibsen did
I love bad mums I love to
Watch them go walking out that door
To see the tail-end of them
Kissing their family goodbye
Inviting dear Torvald to pucker up
Kiss my bumhole through my mom jeans
You worthless fucking cuck!
When I was born
The midwives nicknamed me Jaws
I screamed nightly
For years I didn't sleep
One day my grandmother came to the door
Saw mum’s eyes blank, my jaws clenched
Vice-like around her breast
Her mother said
That child will be the death of you
That child will be the death—
I wonder if I drove her to it
Or if I pulled her back
⟰
Ode to Rex Hunt
When I was a kid I heard him on talkback
Men would call in and if they said something good
He would award a voucher for the lobster cave
Which I assumed was the height of elegance
Examples of things he thought were good to say
In his renowned commentating style
Were calling a footy player with the last name wojcinski
“Monica” as in monica lewinski
Because a man taking advantage over his female staff member
Was topical and inclusive because
There were pretty much no women
Involved in footy at the time
Another thing he did was when he thought the game unwinnable by one side
He’d sing ‘IT’S OVERRRRR’ in an operatic voice
To be like the fat lady singing
Which is another example of his lifelong advocacy
rex hunt had a board game named after him
My friend’s nan kept her photo with him in the box
There are two genders in rex hunt’s universe:
Two stacks of cards called “yibbda yibbda” and “maaaaaagnificent”
rex hunt has other things that he has done
Like when he had an affair with a thirty-year-old beautician
Called Robyn Hood, but I think her name sounds made-up and like
Who would want to buff the hands of the rich
And then give hand stuff to rex
He did this right after his wife had cancer
Because I guess he wanted to
Lighten the mood
rex hunt knows how to have fun
He pummelled a cyclist (allegedly)
He also got into a fistfight with some teenagers (allegedly)
And tried to take a metal fork onto a plane to prove a point about terrorism???
Rex hunt went on fishing adventures
In his television show rex hunt’s Fishing Adventure
He would catch fish, give them a kiss and throw them back
Because just like women
Fish like to be kissed without permission
And thrown to their deaths
When I think of rex I always picture
His fingers clasped on their throat
Their lips gasping their
Skin doing the australian crawl
⟰
Every plastic bag ever made still exists and so do you
Every plastic bag ever made still exists
And was assembled for the casting call
For that dumb movie with the sex predator
And also so do you
Exist that is
I’m not insinuating that you were a sex predator
You were a really nice guy for about four months
You wouldn’t fuck me on my period
Or with a condom
You don't like the way condoms feel
And you don't fuck on periods
For reasons you never specified
What if I had my period on my birthday
Or my death day, which was coincidentally
My birthday too
If I was dying from a venereal disease
And all I wanted before I left the mortal coil
Was a roll in your damp soil
Would you throw me
A shrink-wrapped bone?
⟰
Sexy female murderesses
Let me tell you about
All the sexy female
Murderesses of yore
And also not of yore
Aileen was a high beam
Glinting in the eyes of truckers
Those fuckers coming up on her
She was so much hotter
Than charlize was in that movie
She was the kind of crazy-hot
Men talk about liking:
You fuck crazy
You don’t marry crazy
You fuck crazy you don’t
Put a ring on it till you
Pull a loop around its neck
Death is life cumming
And death by a murderess
Is the female climax:
Slippery, elusive, and
By the time it finally comes
You’ll wish you were never born
Women also fake their deaths better
Because like feigning pleasure we do it
So well we don’t get caught
We’ve got the most to lose
If we leave a mess so
We soak our bloodstains overnight
Like our mothers taught us
Turning wine into oblivion
We do it with fluency, years of
Rehearsal, swan-diving into
Obsolescence like silent movie stars
Badly written love interests
We shed our motivations like leaves
Let them bob up to our shallow surfaces
It’s like men forgot to pen us souls
It’s like—here I am talking about men
When there are so many sexy
Female murderesses to discuss
Before the end of this poem!
There is a murderess of my family name
The other prisoners called her “aunt thally”
Wikipedia says ‘Grills who was
a short dumpy woman who wore
thick-rimmed dark glasses,
commonly served her friends
and in-laws tea, cakes and biscuits’
She mixed rat poison into the tea
Because homeliness and servitude
Are key powers of the sexy female
Murderess
When I go out in a barrage of bullets
In my sexy bullet bra, make sure
My mugshot’s hot and the media
Gets my measurements:
66-66-66
I’ve started taking zoloft
Become placid as a stoned wolf
Wrapped in mutton
Swaddled in lamb’s wool
Can’t even feel my pulse
Like a character in a soapie who is
Played by another actor in the next episode
Like a fox-fur coat lined
With the sharpened canines
Of pups found in her paunch
My resentment lies supine, like
If mary poppins used a spoonful
Of sugar to take out the whole family
And they keeled over the banister
In one fell swoop
My shopping list on the tip
Of my tongue, I come home
With bags of bodies
I don't remember wanting
I keep having nightmares
Where I’m already nine months pregnant
And there’s nothing I can do about it
I keep having nightmares
Where I kill my baby
Squash it somehow like a
Mango, or put it in a basket
And forget it for a week
Babies are so helpless and I
Am in control for once
I am in control
About the author
Eloise Grills is a comics artist, essayist, zine-maker and poet living in Melbourne. Her work has been published widely, most recently in Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, The Spinoff and Queen Mob’s Teahouse. She edits memoir for Scum Magazine. She tweets and grams from @grillzoid, and uses Patreon to cover her arse.
