(courtesy of the White Cockatoo)

Petersham: the formerly fashionable

but now rather heavy overcoat

on the portugese tart. Tickertape ribbons

and other dictionary entries.

Lip-reading Theory of the Leisure Classes,

little Ern stumbles through the public primary

before graduating to Summer Hill Intermediate.

Spain weeps in the gutters of Footscray,

to say nothing of our serious frolic.

Closed my inanimate lids to find it real

behind the shelter sheds. I tell you

these things are real. Even

baroque Mediterranean garden furniture.

Greek quails under the flight path,

cooing softly: the girl from i perama.

Rooming houses line summer dust,

a month of pianos for Kate and Pete.

We wanted underground lighting

or even just subtext

to distinguish the last three decades

of a fallen Enlightenment.

Romance relishes the house-referential,

listening night after night

to Janet Jackson’s Alright pump

through over-priced rental walls.

Hightailing cowboys drawl

back to school, it’s fort for

or la di da, Lacan with a cute snub

neurosis warring over the inner, waning West.

Someone has to pay

or there would be no affect. Pasta dura

rather than Dürer. Crusty paraphrases

stagnant on the unclaimed meat-tray.

We purvey a crystal ball obscura,

a street stripped back, oxford-pinked.

1999 ‘found’ postcard:             Hi Mum!

                                                  Didn’t inhale Paramatta Road, parked

                                                  on anarchy’s shop-floor, Birkenstocked

                                                  our way through claypot chicken,

                                                  & bought into the $5 Rashai

                                                  Frequent Diner’s Club cartel.

                                                  It’s true, global ecologies

                                                  kept us searching for the gastro-commune,

                                                  but to no avail. xxxx, E.M.

Cockroach hopscotch

lags on the line-faltering footpaths.

December gossips between

of, whenever, and somewhat expectantly,

another tin-roofed rapport.

Next year, Lieutenant-Governor

Francis Grose will check out the real estate here,

wave to Joel in the flat above,

and set up a row of convict sweat crops.

Before you know it, it’ll even be home to

The Australian, or at the least its tidy originator.

All good & legal, so they say. Identity

flashes in. At our duplex, national pride

still gags for just one more go

at the Olympics. But why pine for the ultimate

when you can already see Ultimo?