#112 Kevin Brophy 'Nothing happened'

You are at the local tip in forty-degree heat

among the broken cars, lost kids' toys and busted fridges

emptying the car

of a week's rubbish.

The flies like you very much.

It's as if they're starved of visitors here five kilometres out of town.

You throw your last box on a heap at the bottom of a hole

in the earth. It looks like the world's navel down there

that famous sworled entrance to the underworld,

a place denied to the living.

You climb back up into the borrowed car

and push its ignition button.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens the next five times you do it.

The flies are in the car with you now, the heat is too, and the smell.

Steve arrives with his own load of rubbish.

You go across to him and tell him your car is dead.

It is as if it looked into its own grave and froze.

Steve says he is not a mechanic as he

twists the battery connections and the car comes to life.

It goes as if it never stopped.

You park it back in town and leave it there as if nothing happened.