#127 Kevin Brophy 'A three-job-day'

#127 ‘A three-job-day’

Six young men have two cars

bogged on the edge of town,

down by the tip where wrecks end up.

One has a flat battery, both are sunk

to their axles in the mud.

Mazza’s new car, newly mudded,

Snatch-straps them out

to the smell of burning oil and rubber.

The young men grin and leap back in.

We shuffle four desks in a trailer from

the Reading Recovery Room

to the Library

to Lynn’s lounge room

to the Play Room

and those desks are now

much happier, more settled.

She rings us.

Someone in the dark outside

is banging on her windows.

I walk towards her house and wave

my brave torch at her walls,

a scrawny feral cat runs

from her verandah, stands in the dark

staring back at me—

its two bright flat indignant discs—

then it’s gone under the fence,

done with leaping for those night time grasshoppers.