‘You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city, you’re why I’ll need to leave’
                                                                                        — Sharon Van Etten

Driving over Styx Creek, appropriately laden with heavy metal,
the TAFE maintaining a cold shoulder, where transgender trainee
librarians from Kurri, meet Penny Wong’s ex-speech writer,
meet all the dropkicks. Like watching Orange is the New Black
thinking there but for the grace of god (& now whenever I think it’s in
Pennsatuckey’s accent). The city’s lazily retooled past lives of a near future
as I simply reach my nose around the back of my head, the slurry of toxic
carcinogens leach from the gasworks, hidden in full public view.
Outside parents are waddling their kids to school, and, for a minute there,
we could be in the East Village. Seeking neither the uniform distancelessness
of the network nor the uniform nearness of suburbia – all the disavowed
derelict land, the perfect setting for an eat dirtzian doctorate.
Mojo may have long left town but there’s still a few Los Chucos Suaves
hiding in the native grasses, the world inside Clyde Street.