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Famous Reporter 28

Currajah

 

BRENDAN RYAN

---

These Days

 

Vietnamese Bridal boutiques

fruit sweating on the footpath

shop owners spitting into gutters

English spoken only at the counter.  

 

A woman nods off

astride a rocking horse next to the auto-teller.

Slowly, with practised grace

she brings a cigarette to her lips  

 

I stuff notes into my wallet

suddenly aware of a queue forming.

Watching shop owners greet families

I’m reminded of a country suspicion  

 

aren’t you the son of, slow talk

light blazing outside a pub door,

nothing makes sense like familiar territory.

I step out the back door   

 

preoccupied with a view of corrugated roofs

wedge of sky, traffic surfing past.

From the backyard, the fluttering roar

of an MCG crowd building momentum.  

 

These days

you can’t be too thin, too tanned or too rich.

In the shadows of the Commission Flats

spindly men are bouncing with options,  

 

mothers with prams take their chances at the lights.

Our milk bar owner serves us

in an anorak but no shoes.

Like myself he is making do   

 

with what each day settles -

neighbours in black spilling

onto the footpath nights walking back streets

the smell of other peoples’ dinners.

---

Brendan Ryan grew up on a dairy farm at Panmure in Western Victoria, and has recently moved back to the country to live.