You were like the marks that trail along the road
the breaking of the wind
All of you shown
When me and you would spin
We came home, and we came out again
Me the letter, delivered to a friend
You carried me all the way
Just so we can see the end
You are like the raven without it’s wings
Yet you were fast like the thunder
Black as shadow, but bright when the angel sings
The cab driver shakes his head
when I look in his direction.
He’s not free.
I ask a passerby.
Which direction is uptown?
A few foreign words spill from her lips.
She probably thinks
I’m asking for change.
It’s starting to rain a little.
I curse myself for leaving my umbrella
in the hotel room.
The traffic is loud and loathsome,
none of it going my way.
The taste of the morning’s coffee,
straight from the La Brea tar pits,
is still on my tongue.
I despise not knowing where I am.
He guides the knife in and runs it
along the ridge of backbone.
Slices through the section
...
Last Friday night, Andy, Clay and l met at the park on Old Maryborough Rd. We had organised the finer details of when and what to bring on the stifling bus home after school. Andy would bring the booze, Clay, the weed and I would bring the bong. Clay had even floated the idea of inviting Kim and Tracy but I wasn’t so keen on it. Girls always seemed to bring about trouble; sirens that somehow convince us to sell our souls and loyalty for a furtive hand job behind the toilets at the skate park.
In the dim light of the stairwell Olivia couldn’t make out just where she was. There was an amber gloom as the afternoon sunlight seeped through the orange glass side panels around the front door. Robert groped for one of those push-button light switches that leaves the bulb on for a couple of minutes. He said that his place was on the first floor. He grabbed her hand and cried, “Come on!” This was the first time that Olivia had been to his place, though he’d stayed over at hers a few times since they’d started going out. The rather musty air of the stairs persisted on the landing.
He was attempting to collect his thoughts, to remember why he’d ventured down this way, when he found her standing by the river. She stood with her back to him, staring out at the snake-brown water. Jake didn’t know where the woman was from, or where she was going. He’d never seen her before; yet there she was, lingering on his land as if doing so were the most natural thing in the world.
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