The day her boyfriend came home from gaol

She spilled out onto the quiet street

In a sheer red dress

Which showed her flattened breasts,

Her bones.

And the mad edge of her laughter

Held itself to the neighbour’s throats.
They wished she would go back inside—

Lie on her bed with a bottle of gin;

Sit, in a haze, on the lounge-room floor

Flicking her lighter at a pack of burning cards.
The street could not contain

The riot of her voice;

Her stumbling red shape;

Her bare white feet on their bitumen road.
They preferred the hysteria of her screams

Bouncing off inner walls

Of crushed and shattered plasterboard.

There a fist or two,

There the crater of a skull.

A whole panel gone

Where her pushed her body through.
Their ecstasy lasted a day or two.
Then, at night,

They howled in the yard

Like a pair of ill-matched cats

Tearing at cloth; at hair; at skin,

Drawing each other’s animal blood.