
Published in Westerly, Sept 2018 https://westerlymag.com.au/issues/westerly-sa/
and Australian Poetry Anthology Vol 7, 2019
A
Adelaide, I Dream You
Adelaide, I dream you, your cream rollers breaking
apart on your jetties, the raked-clean beaches, sand
tongued white by the Southern Ocean, beachgoers
drinking their flats and lattes, black coffee covered
with steamed white froth. Adelaide, I dream your hot December
your sweaty Christmas parade, Adelaide, your giant plastic
Santa and your blow-up snowmen, is the blinding sun
like the snow, Adelaide? Do you want to make it so?
Your crinoline-frilled history, your spinning-parasol past with corseted
women in Miss Gladys Sym Choon shoes, photochrome postcards
of open streets, the dirt beaten flat over what lies
beneath. What are you trying to hide, Adelaide, in the neatness
of your chart? All laid out in a grid, Adelaide, Hindley St intersecting
your heart, the mango-sweet of Empire Shisha, the neon outlines
of women’s bodies, Crazy Horse strippers with synthetic wigs
gawped at by suitboys and men with paunches, the punch and shrill
of gold-filled pokies, pavements stained with puke. Your blood-dreams
birl inside me, Adelaide. Do our outsides reflect our insides
or is it the other way round? My face is starting to change, Adelaide,
I think I might be you, your hidden pain and homesick past, the slap-slap-slap
of those northern suburbs, white salt-pans and scrubland paddocks
factories and flat-packed land. Your long straight highways stamped
with billboard warnings, littered with crow-picked roadkill, glistered
with cellophaned grief. I don’t know if I belong. Adelaide, I don’t know
if you belong. What does it mean to belong, Adelaide? D’you remember
how this began? You act like it’s all yours, Adelaide, as if
you’d always been here, fussing with dusty petticoats, polishing
curlicued balconies. Is forgetting the only solution? The old
me has faded, Adelaide, making me afraid. I think
we can fix this, I do Adelaide, but we’ve still got a lot to learn.