MEGAN DUNN

 

The Long Blonde Summer

 

During the long blonde summer,
the sun made us do things we didn’t know we knew how to do,
we wore our hair up and let our hopes hang down our backs, unraveling
like jerseys, under the eyes of the boys in the cars that drove round and round,
inside our minds, Christie Brinkley became a Goddess, her golden mane was the key to
who every girl wanted to be underneath her uniform, bikinis grew on our bodies like moss, soft
and moist, saving fingerprints and cigarette butts and beer flavoured lies, before they were lies, Belinda
Carlisle’s voice was a vault of sand and her smile turned the dial that opened the sound of every wave,
during the long blonde summer, our parents drifted away, disappearing into the woodwork of the houses
we could barely inhabit, denim jeans peeling off our tans in the eyes of the cars driving the boys around
the lake, that sings the songs, that buried the Barbie Dolls, that bring Kylie Minogue up out of the waves,
playing bikini strings, while the mirrors in the houses of our Mothers are the only voices on land with
anything to say, ‘Lick your lips, let your legs lap up your skirt, let your lipstick do the talking—get your
tan out start walking’, during the long blonde summer, the boys that owned the eyes in the cars drove
between our thighs, picking cotton knickers like fresh flowers and we let them have their way, ‘cause the
pool kept beckoning us into the blue, into the blue, into the blue, till it seemed like our way too—late
during the long blonde summer, Rachel Hunter wore her trumpet wrapped round her wrists and
our hopes decayed, short skirts wilted round our ankles and words like pregnancy and abortion
rose up out of the lake, under the clouds in the sky, they were the shapes our mothers’
mouths made, when the eyes of the boys in the cars turned away,
and the long blonde summer faded into sunlight.

The Trouble with My Little Ponies

 

There was always something a bit wanton about My Little Ponies. Their curvy plastic
bodies, the colour of pink vibrators and slut flavoured eye shadow, ‘midnight
mauve’, ‘blow job blue’, and ‘you know you want to, cherry red’ (pastel is the blush
of virgin blood; every good My Little Pony knows that). They had painted on doe eyes
and glitter stuck to their cheap behinds, and fountains of blonde hair that you
could run your fingers through for hours. A pack of synthetic strippers, unleashed
somewhere on the gold coast, running wild, taming the Fathers with the magic trick
of taking off all their fluorescent g-strings at once. Their brave young legs and
silicon souls ready for anything that doesn’t look like love, in the empty ashtray
hour of the morning, My Little Ponies are the kind of toys that will go for a ride with
just about anyone …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Megan Dunn is a writer and artist currently living in London. She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1998. From 1996-1999 she was one of the co-directors of Fiat Lux, an artist-run space in Auckland. Her first poem was published in Landfall 205 (Screens issue). She has studied creative writing part time at Citylit Institute and Centreprise in London.