Dirty skirts bunch and glow –
soaring out of streetlights
& glide down Cringila Road.
                    Those slow
turns unfold, coiling to curl in the street,
cresting gold.
          ‘Tonight’s Sambuca, with roast
coffee, baklava and Mouleet!’
                    I run home
from the bus, alone. The stacks boast
& collect the day’s rust, balancing a
corroded steelwork halo.
          Mouleet floats through six o’clock
& I run past Cringila bowlo’
past rustling bin-bags and barking rottweilers
          taking flight
                    over their rattling deadlocks.

          I step past a cousin, a real squealer,
stop him & ask if he knows my name.
          Halos flare in height, whirlpooling down
blaring brightly, blazing tarnished clouds into
                    to syncopated dust: bursting
          back a pinwheel flame. It shrivels down
into its copper-capped cigarette,
& cinders in rust.
                    He steps on its butt
          twists a foot & mouths
             our Maltese surname.

Adam Formosa is a third year creative writing student at the University of Wollongong. He was recently published in the Best Australian Poetry 2010.
© Adam Formosa
Overland 204−spring 2011, p. 119

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