after Mick Malthouse
We unpick the world’s catenacio,
a Pirlo in an actual traffic jam.
Peak hour breakdown headlights
strung along the Riverside Expressway
all the way back to Toowong.
It is something to believe in
while my delayed Virgin cuts the city’s fringe:
suburban arterials, shopping centres
& their car parks, footy pitches
floodlit for Church League.
“He went into the game with an
injured hand & perhaps
that played on his mind.”
& does anything actually prove our bona fides,
even in streets we have walked forever?
Economy’s fresh towers
climb out of unglimpsed potential.
The pass weighted like a gull
rising on a sea breeze
liberates us or bars us
from the skin of our soundtrack.
This is the threat of our days
in the middle of the beginning of the end.
He refuses fate;
our trucks make the night’s last delivery
in the deserted streets
of the industrial estate.
Liam Ferney's most recent collection, Content, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His previous collections include Boom (Grande Parade Poets), Career (Vagabond Press) and Popular Mechanics (Interactive Press). He is a media manager, holder of the all-time games record for the New Farm Traktor Collective and convener of the Saturdays readings in Brisbane.