1 post tagged suzi hayes

by Suzi Hayes 

The girls are in the end room of the house, the sewing room, but they’re not sewing. They’re huddled beneath the sewing table, a narrow formica bench pushed up hard against the back wall, playing Barbies. She has a lighter and a razor blade. The girls are careful not to make a sound, discovery sure to equal disaster, as they perform the operations. The dirty blonde synthetic hair is hacked off with the razor blade. She begins cutting under the armpit, the flexible metal blade buckling against the stiff plastic of the Barbie’s breast, cutting upwards in a circular motion. The operation is completed with a smoothing of the cut through the application of the heat. They take the evidence to the incinerator in her backyard and burn it before her parents get home from work. The smell of melting Barbie flesh hangs over the street.

Suzi Hayes has worked as a mechanist, bicycle courier, arts manager and freelance writer. She is interested in experimental and avant-garde texts that blur the boundaries of gender and genre. She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.