The zebra measured shimmering lines to a yellow slippery dip, pacing service station skeleton awning –
I considered a sideboard where it lay in the street,
counted five long dashes as a girl reflected cool against gushed drainage,
pink fibre folds hid under happy green wrapping lying about her closed eyes.
Someone had abandoned a white, black-wheeled tractor; its blue bucket matched her bikini top.
‘Should we really be where these tents are in our blue and white swimwear?’
I read and ignored a drip from boned eave.
She lay out on the tarmac, a bikini sphinx, her swimmers eaten by movement over
the waiting slippery dip, against a purple galaxy, with the shadow of Ned Kelly’s horse hiding out.
At her waist things had gone awry,
it was at this point you could note, if not distracted by riveted cement rampart,
blackened buildings which stood dilapidated; ink splatter encroaching to slick surfaces.
She lay, legs an easy knee calf-high cross – out, owning the rigid grip of gutter
below she mirrored still,
under fallen arm white dashed tar trembled the plastic curl of the slippery dip,
flames boiled from where the people had been,
I saw charcoal smear constellations; one green pylon blurred aqua where it met the rip,
written armed line, hip under string, cappuccino skin,
bellicose consumption, between bitumen and shoulder and neck, a small echo of the coming storm.
Her swimsuit cup matched the tractor’s bucket: it was an unusual coincidence.
‘Should we really be where these tents are in our blue and white swimwear?’
The words slowly dissolved as stars jammed from the other side of the wall,
only where the cleaner worked had anything come through.
The far right corner saw the slim frames of the city bombed out of the wilderness.
Plants still lived in the drain,
heavy lines of crossing fled from her hand into froth where she threw up the familiar pool.
Forefront steel points loomed away gold flares sank,
I wondered why someone left the dining room cabinet in the middle of it all, let it be graffitied,
and I realised that the building was just bones, I could see the storm.
A few more suns fell ‘Why was she the only one running?’ A few rusty bloody, hung on.