"... a beautiful sense of harmonising together, weaving over and through each other's voices. The poetry ... testifies to the rhythmic and lyrical quality of the collective's writing skills ... Their poetry and songs sit happily side by side."

Alison Bartlett, Coppertales

"Fit of Passion has many rhythms and is at times pacey, gentle, raunchy, whimsical, and downright perverted.... The authors explore and celebrate how social enigmas impact upon humans, hence exposing how they help shape individual thought, emotion and social behaviour.... Fit of Passion is not only a collection of performance material; its verses "look good" on the page as poetry.... A provocative exploration and challenge invoking an 'understanding and expression of the self'."

Pym Schaare, Social Alternatives

"... a refreshing reminder of the times. ... a good read for the connoisseur of modern Australian poetry.... Should be recommended reading in Secondary High Schools in Australia as part of the literary curriculum in comparative poetry."

Erwin Sakacs, Australian Multicultural Book Review

The Fit of Passion performance and workshop programme was developed in 1997 with support from The Queensland Office of Arts and Cultural Development and Fringe Arts Collective.

Purchasing Fit of Passion

Liz and Kim are available for performances, workshops, and technical support and training.

The book and cassette are available by sending $22 + $2 postage (Aus) / $12 + $2 (US) to: Fit of Passion, PO Box 5858, West End, Queensland, 4101, Australia.

Poetry Samples


Building Site | Bitch Poem | My Mothers Hands |
In the Time of the Yellow Sport's Car | my sister has a new set of breasts

---

Building Site

I work with men on a building site
above a lake so blue.
Older men, veterans of wars,
with missing fingers and gnarled thumbs.
This acceptance of life,
how late it comes. How soon it passes.
It gives me fright.
I work with men on a building site.

Their lusty tales fill my head
of Japanese baths, Korean campaigns.
Their musty pasts evoke my present.
They joke with me, are kind and pleasant.
Their cracked hands know the nail and splinter.
We work till dark in the waning winter,
lay down our tools at approach of night.
I work with men on a building site.

I'm forty-one, but child to them.
They are the joist and two-by-four.
If this be wisdom,
give me more and more.
Give me beam and truss, solid and true.
Give me nail and stud to frame a life.
Give me level and plum to gauge my sight.
I work with men on a building site
above a lake so blue.

Tragedies that scar the heart:
the wife that died, the house that burned,
the friend that ran, the child that fell.
These stories that they blithely tell
ring in my ears in morning's frost.
The money they've made, the future they've lost,
hang in the air like a bird in flight.
I work with men on a building site.

Their wives are wise, strong and old.
Their lives are working, brave and bold.
Their bodies in pain, they are weak of eye.
They walk the beams so free and high.
They walk the beams like younger men.
They've walked those beams since God knows when.
Since God knows when, they know no fright.
I work with men on a building site.

It's just a holiday job for me.
Next month I walk away. I'm free.
They labor on past retirement years.
They labor on and on. I fear
I'll never know a peace so frail.
I gain no peace from hammer and nail.
I know no peace in the dark of night.
I work with men on a building site
above a lake so blue.

Kim Downs


T O P N E X T

Bitch poem
(or it's really quite a compliment)

For five years my brother forgot my name:
"Do the dishes, bitch".
At seventeen I got straight A's:
"Unmarriageable bitch".
Equal rights in conversation?
"Loudmouthed bitch".
Intellectual argument?
"Smart-assed bitch".
Justifiable complaint?
"Troublemaking bitch".
Embrace the spiritual?
"Irrational bitch".
Cry when you're sad?
"Over-emotional bitch".
Confront the past with therapy?
"Neurotic bitch".
Admit ignorance?
"Stupid bitch".
Say it's unfair?
"Complaining bitch".
Don't want "looking after"?
"Ungrateful bitch".
A poem about a sleazebag?
"Man-hating bitch".
Pissed off at injustice?
"Aggressive bitch".
Get your hands off my breasts:
"Frigid bitch".
Sexual feelings?
"Bitch on heat".
Stand up to backstabber?
"Nasty bitch".
Political power?
"Unfeminine bitch".
Tired of voluntary work?
"Selfish bitch".
Work hard for advancement?
"Competitive bitch".
Put on weight?
"Fat bitch".
Say no at the nightclub?
"Stuck-up bitch".
Don't dress like a lady?
"Ugly bitch".
Prefer the company of women?
"Lesbian bitch".
Write about women's lives?
"Feminist bitch".
My favourite coffee cup?
"Life's a bitch
and so
am I".

Liz Hall-Downs

T O P N E X T

In the Time of the Yellow Sport's Car

In the time of the yellow sport's car she was prone to ring him
(at ten minutes to eleven)
at the Santa Barbara Taco Bell
where he - jeans rolled up, barefooted -
mopped the floor minutes before closing.
Her velvet voice vaulted down the telephone lines
- from two hundred miles away -
telling him:
how much she missed him,
what she did with her fingers
(Yes! At that very moment!),
where her lips wanted to play,
where his tongue might explore,
could he please drive down right away?
how she would wait up for him
how she would meet him at the door,
no matter if it be three or four.

This telephone foreplay was calculated to nudge the scales
on which he weighed his discipline so carefully:
Fatigue versus desire.
Gasoline consumption versus ready cash.
Tomorrow's responsibilities versus long legs
(wrapped around his waist tonight).
Mostly ... it worked.


Checking his wallet for funds,
or maybe,
stealing ten dollars from the register if he was a little short,
he would lock up,
finish his beer,
skip the drive home for shower and change,
step over the door and fold into the yellow MGA,
- greasy, no shoes -
smelling of frijoles and onions,
and turn south into the sweltering California night
because ...
she was steaming too,
and did not care if he smelled funky
or what clothes he wore,
because - she had a smell of her own
and the clothes would be on the floor soon enough anyway.

By the time he reached Ventura Highway,
the four-lane concrete ribbon
- bathed in amber -
would be mostly his to glide and weave upon,
eighty miles an hour, 1 am, top down, no cops,
desert wind in hair,
visions of her - spread and moaning -
on the living-room floor,
which is as far as they usually got
when he arrived like this - even though -
she had two roomates in the old beachouse
and they were notorious light sleepers.


But now ...
a slumbering "City of Angels" whizzed past.
He sniffed factory smoke and the sea,
sensed - somewhere behind his nostrils -
that these nights were like no other
and somehow,
now,
in this time of the yellow sport's car,
an odd leavening of
youth, lust, poverty, a blond,
and this primal roaring in his ears,
would sear his neural pathways
like a red-hot branding iron
and nothing that came later
would ever feel
quite the same.

Kim Downs

T O P N E X T

my sister has a new set of breasts

my sister has a new set of breasts
perky and pert like an adolescent's
two children, a full-time job, an exhausted
expression and a house-husband.
but she can attest to her success
by two new three thousand dollar breasts.

my sister has a new slim waist
though she was loved the way she was
slice scar below ribs, four stomach staples
anaesthetised, nearly died on the table
of the surgeon who said this would make her
a new slim waist to compensate for babies.
a new slim waist to compensate for babies.

my sister has two lovely new legs,
suctioned the cellulite, waxed all the hair
paid two thousand dollars to deny the rubenesque
contours of her womanliness. she's saving now,
her thin pay cheque, for collagen
injections to her upper lip.

my sister is a fashion plate. she buys the
designers create. notes from the bank screw up her.
she works to pay for the latest dress she'll
wear once or twice, the shoes that match to make
it nice. and she can neither sit nor stand
in clothes made only for looking at.

my sister has no feeling in her breasts.
my sister lives on packet soup and biscuits
my sister's scar tissue hinders her movement
now she drives the block to the supermarket.
my sister's gone bankrupt. she lost her job
they said she didn't move fast enough.

my maturing sisters hate themselves
for not being society's version of beauty
my beautiful sisters hurt themselves,
believe self-mutilation will make them happy
my smart, sad sisters have never believed
there is much more to love than a perfect body.

Liz Hall-Downs

T O P N E X T

My Mother's Hands

i toddled through department stores,
holding her safe hand with its familiar
callouses till some silver shining
thing distracted, stopped me dead
to tilt my head at costly glitter.
reaching up, the hand i grasped

was someone else's mother's,
her face a stranger's. I ran down
aisles, calling 'Mamma! Mamma!'
in childish terror; and oh, such tears,
such relief, when at last i found her,
smiling at the lipstick counter.

she says my hands are long now
and slender, like her mother's.
grandma healed with hers but i know
only black/white sepia on the mahogany
mantelpiece, the head shrouded
like a nun's, as pure and self

sacrificing as that martyrdom
running deep through our family's
matriarchy, now my hands split
skin and muscle, massage her years
of anxiety, crackling arthritis,
contracted tendons, joints tight as

the pursed lips of disapproval at that
Lost Reputation of my twenties. i turn
her as she turned me, baby, use
fragrant oils, no Johnson's powder,
feel the remaining years slip under
fingers, find pressure points

and press the point of my maturity
into her aging spine, still striving
to be upright in body, mind,
unyielding to time's ravages.
the invisible threads we women
spin to our daughters connect

in our eyes, and i see myself
at seventy, and all the women who came
before me maidens, mothers, crones,
goddesses pulsing through our corded
lives. my hands tremble; her face is mine
i see my unborn children in her eye's shine.

Liz Hall-Downs