FAP winner – Poetry: The Deliveroo delegate’s day off


‘You either deliveridoo or you deliveridont’
Will Shu yelled at me from app land.

But that was yesterday.

Today I’m tender, teased, and toastie,
everything shows it off.

I’m with you now, comrade,
loved one, theyfriend.

We roll into the eucy-scrub,
it’s lovely for us.

Pointing I say: that tram goes straight to Toorak.

But you are still here, still saying ‘This park’s big enough
for our love; big enough for our big us’

I’m thinking of all the brioche,
all the kimchi, the pickles –
the long taste in the mouths of one million.

And of ways we could bring up the True Cost of Work
in those meetings we attend.

I have been in scenes like this before:
my paramour lawling in the grass, heavily, lovelily.

We take up uttering,
in God’s Own Voice –
seeing what we believe:

I am wrist deep in my heart, rising from my life.

I have a recurring nightmare
about the climate; I am not the only one.

The New Unionist is a trans-femme in exile.

Where will we go next, social democracy, success?

The Right To Strike is everywhere available
and nowhere allowed.

I think that there is space in words
for all human variation.

I think there might be in the union.

I love your overground word use.

I love you for your poem wombling.

What we reach is a peopled language.

They say a deliveroo driver dreams this world,
& I do, I do.

NUW_EveryWorkerCounts_logo MWC (1)

nteu-logo MEAA logo

 

 

D Perez-McVie

D Perez-McVie has been published in Rabbit, and edits poetry for Demos Journal. They live in Naarm, Victoria and post on Instagram @dpmcvie.

More by D Perez-McVie ›

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