Ross Donlon
- - - 0 0 0
His Lincoln Continental filled Paddo lanes
like a king-sized bed, personalised
number plate of his three letter name
shouting like a Daily Mirror headline.
The three spooky zeros going nowhere
made the plate seem wider than the car.
So you looked right, listened, looked left,
then right again before you kept on walking.
Five Ways intersection just up the street
was a roulette reminder of choices you make.
I was with ‘one of his girls, a ‘special kid’
‘someone he looked out for’, their relationship
hard to follow as a wave in the House of Mirrors.
So I half-waited to be romantically riddled
with real bullets in our apartment doorway,
his three letter card saying hi and goodbye.
She kept his rented one-bedroom flat neat,
tucked in the S.C.G sized doona and bedding,
refilled the bar, restocked the scotch.
Reflecting mirrors on the bedroom ceiling
must have given Eastern suburb tradies
a good laugh when they stuck up the tiles.
Still, it was the Seventies, dig? The Cross
has always leant its name to metaphor
and Sydney reflects its darkest nights in glitter
and stars, those mirrors of the turning universe.
Mansions tip diamonds into the harbour.
Ferries chug innocent commuters
to their ordinary work and home again,
trails of the just-gone day sunk without trace.
Think strip joint, wine bar, night club,
business girl, standover man, the Gap.
Juanita Nielsen was a pain in the wallet.
Any of us could have disappeared for a laugh
to settle someone’s nerves, quick as a Bex
down the open throat of Luna Park.