6. Best Before
Price lined with the market motif
Lime cut aid cross logo
Rimmed on a raised, championing cocktail glass
Cheers
To the icy, sterile white women, hot pink summer blondes
On posters preaching skincare by bleaching
Deep-skinned employees on nineteen dollars per restocked hour
The safi model’s Velcro fingers unripped from her freshly splashed face,
Closed eyes and smiles, intoxicated by the pleasures of radical self-love appropriated from stolen
essential oils and minerals, Indians were villains for massaging into their jinn-possessed, long bushes
Post-racial double standards: it’s not grossly greasy if it’s curly-affirming hairsprays, Elvis
cloning pomades, semen-hardened gels, whip cream mousses, crunching scalps in the New Age
Enter the rendered sleek, glowing wet but going for a natural look glossed over by Ne-Yo
colonial thefts, Miss Independent White SHEOs mandate with their never-before-discovered
beauty brands, hacks, Q-tips, and tricks
Coloured girls are so sick of seeing
Centuries-old, abandoned health benefits archived by commercially packaged bullet points
No,
I don’t have a rewards membership to this exclusive sister club
No follow-up question to join
The scanned barcode with a more unique identifier than eroding, anomic ethnic cultures,
Struggling for ownership and authenticity against western purification schemes,
Pizza Effects optimising the benefactor at the disposal of the beneficiary
Ayurveda now prescriptively found in all pharmacies
Pointillistic copyright infringements, applied terms and conditions
The signed back of my credit card agreeing,
Origins are nonrefundable
Improvement Exchanges only
Raqiya Ahmed is an emerging writer and artist based on Dharug country. She is interested in intersectional identity politics and often unconsciously alludes to the sacrificial love of a mother in her written works. On other occasions, she eagerly explores the contemplative and psychological dimensions of realism through still-life and slow cinematic approaches accompanied by either mild or heavy symbolism. Her works have been published or exhibited by SBS, Sydney Opera House, Yarilla Arts Gallery, Jacky Wintery Gallery and AIRspace Projects. She was a recipient of The Next Chapter Fellowship to complete a manuscript she hopes to publish soon.