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Brendan Ryan
- These Days
- Vietnamese Bridal boutiques
- fruit sweating on the footpath
- shop owners spitting into gutters
- English spoken only at the counter.
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- 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
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- 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.
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- 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,
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- 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
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- with what each day settles -
- neighbours in black spilling onto the footpath
- nights walking back streets
- the smell of other peoples’ dinners.
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