I.

Alice cut her wrists
& joined the Party
read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
& Ten Days that Shook the World
Japan was flattened
white shadows on a wall
shaping the outline of a man
the dead returned
yellow with atabrin
The Burma Road
the fuzzy-wuzzy angels
the Cold War hotted up
3 years the Revolution
the comrades warned her
you’d better cut your hair
her mother raged
& she was disinherited
her father said
I was a redragger at 21
the Jewish Secretary
was a Spanish Brigader
his leather coat blazed on the Esplanade
he laid her back on the desk
in the District office
but couldn’t get it up
Never apologize he said
I’m old enough to be your father.

II.

she lived in the ranges
full of strontium 90
hitched a ride with the wheat trucks
revving up the hills
sold the Workers’ Star
at The Railway Workshops
when Bluey Blood drove in from Iron Knob
his Humber Snipe was boiling
he used his boilermaker’s shoulders
to storm the Council Chambers
bursting through the Town Hall doors
like anarchists     red-headed     laughing
she saw him there beside her

they crossed The Horseshoe Bridge
to little Italy
shacked up in a single bed
with the light bulb dangling
he said I’m beginning to smell like a woman
the Party members sent her to coventry
outside the Chinese cafe
old friends cut her dead
he bought her a hock-shop ring
With this ring I thee wed
in true Communist marriage
the Party Secretary said
We have reason to believe
he works for ASIO.

III.

she walked out
of the Saturday matinees
leaving behind Hepburn
in The Philadelphia Story
the ragged coconut palms
the trolley buses sparking
down Riverside Drive
she was Garbo in Anna Christie
meeting Garfield & Jean Gabin
on the waterfront
Bluey Blood bought her a ticket
on The Trans-Continental
they played pontoon & poker
across the desert

the glass dome of Central
swarmed with light
at Mansion House
a metho-drunker raged
with a cut-throat razor
in the Coal Strike
& the coldest Sydney winter
she read The Poor Man’s Orange
typed up the strike stencils
in The Henry Lawson Hall
& lost her baby
the Control Commission told him
She’s only a flash in the pan.

IV.

Squatting in Marriott St
the rats behind the icebox
mildew traced varicosed curliques
on the walls
embroidering bibs by the coal fire
the slag exploded
her first born tore her apart
between the pains she read
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
raw from elbow to wrist
with a breech-birth boy
Bluey walked down the ward
a branch of almond blossom
dropped on the white bed

the Referendum to ban the Party
was lost     won      lost again
smoke from the illegal literature
darkened the autumn air
at The Pensioners’ Hall
they sang The Red Flag
& danced the tango
the pensioners’ piss
rained through the ceiling
the second baby
had infant eczema
(he swore it wasn’t his)
at The Petrov Commission
Alice was called a spy
the Hungarian Revolution
split the Party
the Revisionists slipped
Krushchev’s speech
through the letterbox

pregnant pushing a pram
under the flags & banners
she marched on May Day

two old men by the Moreton Bays
Why don’t you go home
                                         & get married?

V.

at night on the back step
he plucks at the ukelele
his heart breaking
the light touches
his red hair
the sun cancers
flake on the backs
of his hands
in bed he      sleeps
without touching

women are destroyers
& you don’t want
another kid!

warming her fingers
over the gas
she types at the kitchen table
Bluey walks the linoleum
whispering will I kill her
tonight or tomorrow?

in the backyard
he is burning her poems
in a cut-down drum
under the choko vine
the children watch
sucking their thumbs
9 years go up in smoke

next morning she leaves
without saying goodbye
remembering how he’d said
One day when things get tough
you’ll take the kids
& go back to the bourgeoisie.

Image: The Horseshoe Bridge ca. 1963