Wet Christchurch chins, boots scraped off on Canterbury doorframes

Pop the buttons on her Glassons jeans

collapse into crinkled laundry

she’s Canterbury fourth generation white girl pussy.

You’re seventeen, thirty-seven in your head. Indestructible in the 0-3.

Fish a Durex from your best bro’s bedside stash.

Rasping crotch forests, legs mixed, hashed. Panting.

In its cot her toddler bleats

Its mum – ya bro’s missus – agonised, impaled, your bones jumbled.

Her bleached braids stretched around your fists

like shopping bag handles.

Tongue stud magnet tang.

The neighbour thumps the gib.

The wee one screams; she stops jiggling.

His future ex, his seconds, is slathered with your spit

You grunt and shudder

Ya bro texts: He’s chuckin the forks away,

clocks off at eight.

Mate: bring my wheel brace.

You stuff the gooey Durex in ya pocket, pull ya Dickies up.

Christchurch, five weekdays down. Time to go out and self-destruct.

*

 

 

 

He’s havin’ a sad, he’s called the 2IC a faggot, packed it in.

Stares you out until you light him a ciggie.

Reckon some cunt’s been rooting my bitch…

Pink neon ripples in black carpark puddles.

Your white shirts. Your town shoes black as crude.

Ya reckon?

He’s a grumpy cheerleader, twirlin that wheel brace.

In the Burger King illuminating puddles in the potholes of Psycho City streets

you each lick the Woodstock off ya toffee-sticky knuckles.

The bite-mark on your shoulder itches.  Ringworm alarm.

Text from Mum: Key in mailbox.

Delete.

Bro, she’s rootin round on me.

Help me catch the cunt.

 

*

Drops you off on Manchester, goes to find a park,

The Shooters queue is all broken bottle gravel.

Lakes of bourbon & coke

Elbow your way through the losers.

Your eyes bump against a bouncer’s gums.

Interrupted by a text. Just Dad. Fuck crashing at his pad. Delete.

Shoulder clamped. A wall of black t-shirt pecs

Who shamed the shit outta you at Les Mills,

One’s touching his earpiece, leaning in like he wants to pash

It ain’t you, he goes, and gives ya licence back

A headbutt explodes ya nose, or his –

pulsing jawbone. Hot, numb tongue.

A mob of moaning yawns and eye-whites,

Skinners and fobs swap teeth–headlocks – jeans –dropped phones stomped

25 Rothmans snapped in their packs.

Black leather dress shoe soles, tae kwon do poses, slow-motion strobe

Walkie talkie static crackle, boots, belts, red, blue, sirens –

you bolt, lose one of ya town shoes –

 

*

He wakes you with a slap –

The trees full of screaming starlings

Crystalline windscreen – frost –Port Hills sparkling – bouncers sweeping sidewalks

He slaps the jiggling condom against your face

Straight up, he goes, ghost-breath. The fuck, bro?

Your seatbelt won’t undo –

The wheel brace makes your eye black and hot and fizzy.

It’s a baton, a jamboree of smashed teeth, your head lolls.

Railway bells. As BK kids in visors heat bagels

You crack the door and flop onto the blacktop

Try to crawl under the Falcon, spotting rust on the muffler.

He drags your ankles

Knocks the last of ya fillings out.

those cubes of windscreen and loose teeth

look like white dice on casino mats

that time nothing else was open at 7 a.m.

so yous went to the casino for the breakfast buffet

sprinted out without payin’

could hardly run from the belly-laughs, hid behind a dumpster

giggled till you pissed yourselves.

Texted Mum, she picked yous up on Moorhouse Ave

At home, you watched Spongebob and

slurped Cocoa Puffs

with the pretty Alps in the background

(but it woulda made you gay if you’d pointed that out)