Anne Casey
Stations of the Cross
Thank Christ as you fly
the coop: battery-packed
high-rise workstations
to duck tailgating spoilers,
facing James Station, cross past
the shuttering kiosk edging
Elizabeth, parry a Coke
can flung by a footloose
bin-looting ibis, dodge Pitt's late-blast
building-works up Park: rubbernecking
the highlit glitter of the quickie
-loan corner pawnbrokers
to Williamand the rally,
whoop, cry: early
clustering of the late-shift
sisterhood: six-foot
-six Amazons teetering
in their size ten six-inch heels,
stick-thin pins sticking out of skin
-tight too-high way-low Day-Glo,
needle-stick
arms clamping
clutches stashing
fossicked scrimpings
for the op, a fix (alt types
of pipe dreams);
unused jimmies
for the shirty johnny-come
-laters, the shadow-shifting kerb-skirting
kick-seekerswide-berthing the wet
t-shirt pool-comp-touting
Kings Cross Hotel to the welcome
red glare and stutter
of the titanic Coke
sign, piles of Lebanese
pizza: one-fifty a giant doughy slice
three for three soakage for the cheap
drunksup the main drag, a heated
squall at the station entrance, through
the crazed tangle of X-rated
neon beacons flashing flesh
temples: not the likeliest
of shrines to find religion,
though it restored my faith
for a while in something higher
that towering wall of muscle taking
down the off-his-face lurching outsider
with a benevolent, diamond-
crusted smile, won unbeknownst
for a flicker of recognition each time
I strode past: limp-suited,
fake snakeskin-booted
to my knock-down bedsitter
where I plugged my ears
to the next-door knocking
-shop, juked junkies
on the back step,
overlooked nightly cop-shows
outside my window (the right
to silence reserved for the accused)
that unorthodox
saviour ministering
the illusion of my
incongruous inclusion
until the fetor and the spilled
body fluids flushed
me out to 'higher' ground,
where I found
the cost of admission
rose with the postcode.
First published in Portrait of a Woman Walking Home (Recent Work Press 2021).
