Liam Ferney

jurisprudence

remind yourself that they don’t know
you live here and then tune out
like an old cello in the damp air
listening to the trains outside your windows
a sound a million footsteps deep
stampeding towards gallows
up to lexington 125 feel sick and dirty
more dead than alive pause for a moment
outside a deserted snack bar
and consider the triumvirate in a hopper clone:
dean presley monroe and a barbiturate haze
heavier than smog or dogma a fly hovers
in the air and one of the posters is torn
at the corner like an indeterminate world
posing as a mirror of itself and the setting sun
lets you consider the pacific as a gift
from an almost forgotten friend
or the possibilities of civic renewal
there are post-it notes on the fridge
telling you to look at yourself while you’re reading
and consider the leather stock whip
dangling on your belt out here fiction
is at its last frontiers the lurid leitmotifs
of a neon highway course the country like veins
and if you’re still at the snack bar buy yourself
a coffee sit down and have a chat with me
i’ve got nothing to do i’m just waiting
for my man twenty-six dollars in my hand

This poem was first published in Meanjin magazine.