3. blacktown
outside a fuel station down the road from

               blacktown boys’ high

     young men gather like exiled gods, slouching,

reedy, scraggly facial hair several degrees

thinner than proper beards. mr mahfouz, he’s cool, he’s cool.

      mr noorani sucks, though. the tinny, metallic light

from the petrol pump that illuminates their shadowed faces

            is as pale as forgottenness. they vape, breathing steam

out into the darkness & back in again, lungs burning, skins hot

                         & blood sluggish as they talk of

             white girls, black girls, brown girls,

   girls, girls, girls. none of them mention how shy & hapless

they become in front of real women, how angry, how incomplete.

             yet it takes courage of a sort

                         to come out here night after night

    in search of purpose, flakes of ice shifting & slicing beneath

 their skins, baggy jeans & deep pockets filled with

     grimy loose change, wrinkled cigarettes

                                             & folded knives. part-time shifts

                                  at the movers’ & the cleaners’

             have them aching & stretching, yawning, sweaty,

eyes half-slitted against the sun

                                  when it comes. they return

             to quiet, crumbling houses & piles of half-ignored homework

    & younger sisters & brothers who need breakfast. they return to the wheel

                         that grinds itself into their backs, shattering their spines,

       their wills, one millimetre at a time.

but before that—before that—they are free

                        in the small hours between night & morning,

        dull-eyed yet iridescent as

goldfinches at dawn.