Two Poems by Lorraine Gibson

 

Payday

It’s 8am

the supermarket flyscreen clicks

and slams — kiddies

hurtle in and out — staff breath in

their practiced air of vigilance.

Last night’s streets 

and bellies — full

of dark and hunger

now overflow

with curry sauce and chips.

White crumpled paper bags

all grease and sauce

adorn the ground like

dirty snowballs.

Across footpaths, curbs

and scattered benches      

citizens enact the high finance of

welfare’s sturm and drang.

A tenner here a twenty there

the fifty Vinnie flogged

for beer and gambling at the club. 

Back home our party packs are chillin’

— karaoke’s wired.

Country roads take me home, to the place

where — kiddies quickly learn

when ‘she was bein’ cheeky’.

Come dusk 

the knowing caw of crow

foretells this night.

 

 

Our Borrowed Nest

I will go back to

Tempranillo afternoons.

I will go back to

taking my white sheets

the good ones       to impress

our summer bodies

newly washed    ready for anything

in our borrowed nest. Come with me

back to skin      whispering

along      our       length

your heat

giving me to myself.

Lorraine Gibson is a Scottish-Australian anthropologist, painter and writer. Her work is upcoming in Mensicus, the Australian anthology Poetry for the Planet and is published in Live Encounters, WordCity, Oceania, TAJA, Australian Aboriginal Studies (AIATSIS), The Australian Museum’s Explore Magazine and others. Her book, We Don’t Do Dots: Aboriginal Art and Culture in Wilcannia, New South Wales is published in the UK by Sean Kingston Publishing.