'Fingal Valley' by Stuart Barnes | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Nan's budgerigar,
cat fed squeezing like the morning
fog between oxidized barbed
wire and gorse
with an older cousin
with a slug gun
booting sheep skulls
stripped by gusts, our fathers'
1950s snares swooped by plovers,
daring: 'yellow spurs! forearms
up!' shooting star-
lings for laughs
another exhausted afternoon:
a hotted-up Torana: another burnout
to Warrant, to Poison
footy, swimming, cricket
on Pop's prized green, putting
with the wrong kind of club
transfixed by sixpence-
riddled heads hooked over the wash-
board another hand of Patience
and Snap! the glass swan
brimming with owl-red water
numb on mother-of-pearl veneer
lake one more theft—
a short-finned eel, writhing
and crackling—from the Esk
squeal of cast iron frying
pans slaps on the back each mouth-
ful of muddy flesh foreign to a South-
erner on each empty double bed
a leering toilet roll
doll full moon, mid-
night's deer-sprint to the outdoor
loo the top bunk's hexagonal wiring sprung,
the mattress oozing through the cells like honey
Stuart Barnes