Street Life

Storms of ebony and cobalt plus white and tangerine
and the half clinker brick pockmarks its daring.

A boy walks past this urban wall with his mother and a dog.
‘I can see little cloud men in there,’ he says to her.

The boy stalls and faces the wildness on the wall
and he squints hard at all its towering patterns.
His mother holds one of his small hands
and she disciplines their dog on a lead with the other.

‘Looks better than most tagging’, she huffs
as their dog jerks her toward the smother of colour.
She pulls their jumpy dog back to get a better range.
‘I can see a treasure chest’, she says, inhaling breath.

The boy releases her hand and inspects the aerosol unrest.
‘Little men or the treasure chest?’ he asks turning back to her.

‘Could be other things too,’ says his mother breathing easier
and she examines the vast, floating curlicues some more.
Soon, she guides her son close to her, arm on his shoulder.
Their dog sits, the lead slackens and they all gaze at walled cloud.

Katherine Healy has published poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. She gained her Master of Letters in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University and is a member of Writers SA. She currently has a poetry collection and novel as works-in-progress, and since March this year has been shortlisted for the Australian Book Review’s 2018 international Peter Porter Poetry Prize, and Literary Nillumbik’s Ekphrasis Poetry Award for 2018.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.