Back Road
revisiting childhood through that time-gauze of greying feather,
back to a time
when the road seemed wider
but had the same volume of insanityDad always concrete at the wheel
Mum in the "Worry" seat
sharing with Dad,
the worries sometimes reaching the backseat
as the sporadic vapours got too heavy
and did their backdraft thing
upon our small foreheads
breathing in the pockets of blacknessyet, we ride
our little bodies fading into the upholsterythe rear-view mirror
keeping its eye on us
Brunswick St Blues
Brunswick St
sits like the continental shelf just below moralityrain washes the bad scenes
off the street
the killers still get the air
for free
yet upon the working girls
the evil shadows linger [End Page 18]while the decision-makers bottle the blood
and facelift the ValleyVoodoojack waits at the end of Brunswick St
like some kind of licorice addict;
paved bitumen runs straight into his mouth,
congested with exhaust fumes
and scummed in the beard of nightwhistling through blackened teeth
like some patron saint of the red-light militias
that perpetuate the Brunswick St blues tunea black singing snake gripped by the neck—
can't bite back
Jaded Olympic Moments
for Jennifer Cullenthey made their way through the sliding-door
and stole the lot
video, mini-disc equipment, fly-fishing reels, my son's piggy bank
and my literary award
all on the eve of the Games
capping off a sterling period of post-funeral melancholy
after my young cousin's passingthen, sitting on Jen's couch
as the ochre-kissed women came out
and did their thing in the center of the stadium [End Page 19]
we had tears in our eyes
thinking, that's our mob!but no,
only a romantic would think that
it's still very much an us and them kind of deal in this
modern dreaming,
we're city people without a language
and some of us have even lessbut then the coppers rang
said they'd caught them
three smack-head white boys
18, 19, 20the gear was gone without a trace
the video, the piggy bank, the literary award
and it made sense
'cause if blackfellas had broken into the house
they would've taken Dad's 10 ft. Landrights flag'cause it was worth just as much
as Cathy Freeman's gold
Samuel Wagan Watson is a poet of Bundjalung, Birri Gubba, German, Scottish, and Irish descent whose books include Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight (University of Queensland Press, 1999), which won the David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers; Itinerant Blues (University of Queensland Press, 2002); and Smoke Encrypted Whispers (University of Queensland Press, 2004), which won the nsw Premier's Literary Award for Book of the Year.