CATH KENNEALLY
Poetry—'Crying Girl'
      

brisk-trotting down the bike path
propelling Junior in the pram, keeping close up
against her bloke who's striding it out, steely-jawed

I thought you'd be there, she bawls, loudly, way
past caring that this walker who's drawn level
might eavesdrop. Her late-teens tight-packed fleshy

face is blotched and smeared. She dashes snot &
tears across it with one hand loosed momentarily
from the buggy handle. They belt ahead too fast

for me to hear his answer, save that it's dis-
missive, curt, and I can see he looks straight
ahead, rotating a rollie between his fingers

he won't be there, that seems clear, perhaps just not
today, perhaps not for the wedding, or christening, or never again.
He's a cartoon tough, stays rawhide dry while she dissolves

She's leaking at all the seams but he's a fish's bum
they're coming unstitched by the waters of Tamar
the holey family of Launceston