at the end of the rail
Photograph by Marissa Beletti
in the morning when the sun peels
back like a paper cut and the blue
metal is thunder under our feet
i see shadow-diamonds spread
across the train yard and i feel
as small as a bird and as wide
as a sail
//
last night i listened to your two way radio
i pulled the blanket up to my ears and shaped
myself into a satellite its static jargon a dialogue
with god or grease or grit i heard the miracle of
boom boom boom
we were the
new age of romans with a thousand outposts
we were cowboys riding iron centipedes
//
before dawn i threw off my blankets
like old ghosts sprang from my bed
like new smoke heard your voice
in the walls as you swept
me up in your wings
took me to your shoulders
atlas or he-man or rambo
on the rails duke on the frontier
you smelt of oil aftershave radio waves
you whispered to me in the language
of future and the earth
fell away
//
i had barely seen the blue streets
how the stars grew hazy in the steam
how horizon bled the false border of morning
we lived before the aftermath
i am a fault-line across your chest
liquid gold sprung from your veins
i fill the cavity where your heart should be
i am young country
boom boom boom
//
at the station the rails rattle
in the flyscreen and the man with
the corkboard halo is chequered
like a topographic map
when he grins he shucks open
a territory calls you by
our last name
i hear
a town or a street or a mountain
or the origin of a valley
//
in the office you say
wives and work as if they
tighten bolts avenge crimes
on your holsters there are radios the size
of guns you are blue men with
un-dreams as big as china
under your eyes
everyone is envious
go ahead the man says into his radio
laying the rail with his words
//
at the terminal box you teach
me to splice the rails my body
a limp flag made of flesh
i hang from the lever
asking for islands to swell
on my biceps
birds turn into reverse silhouettes
it’s excalibur you exclaim
stick your foot down like
sinking a spade
boom boom boom
//
when we walk the rails we tell history
this parallel never met by our shadow
i swim onto your shoulders as day
breaks egg-shells
i am the new
collar ironed by my mother
and the space above your
head is a frontier
//
from here the world is flat
borders white lines in the dirt
you can feel a train coming
in the shake of the earth
we are going to be giants you say
gripping my shins
i roll up my
sleeves and flex my arms
giving you horns
//
at the door meccano in full-scale
you swing me into the carriage
the child who is flightless
climbs on the back of the
wind held up a hurt bird
//
in the cabin men breathe planets
onto perspex they hark like myna birds
rooted bitou bush hunched like cane toads
they claim to live at
these gears they’ve got
tickets to show it
they’ve crossed this country
ten times over sleepless
they’ve seen land where water
is foreign where open cuts
are oasis
i sit back and watch you
walk ahead on the rails
//
trees white-paper in the train’s blared
whiteness shape themselves into
memories call themselves footprints
they’re roped to fence posts
this is morning not mourning
my breath leaves my mouth
like a greenhouse
boom boom boom
//
up ahead on the rail you dance
with your arms of red light
and i wonder what it means
to write history with your
body
your blood let
disfiguring the open
cut of morning
//
whatcha think of your dad one of the men
asks his cadence forty packs of imported
cigarettes in his fist is a gear that i know
lights up streets turns show houses into
nuclear families
he’s a hero i say but
the word feels tiny when i’ve seen maps
that lay across this country like a bandage
you’re the beginning
and the end of
of the world
you’re the answer
to everything
//
way off the plant blinks like
a child-killer a christmas in morse code
spaghetti pipes spewing
white venom
ethanol bruising the sky purple
everything screams
the horizon quivers the drivers pull the horn
birds rush to their nests in the clouds
fall through invisible floor boards
burn up on re-entry
//
sometimes i wonder
if you ever stopped in those
towns where you once said
the waters ran like blood
did you own a skeleton key
did you ever peel back
excalibur feel the weight
of the blade in your hands
alter the course of this
track
//
in my ears our heart
boom boom boom
my eyes mirror
the blood-shot sky
the thrum of the engine
rattles through my bones
all my ancestors are ghosts
all my ancestors cling
to the atmosphere
as you walk the rails
fade into morning settle into history
men talk talk talk
we have learnt distance
in this country
we have learnt to never
look back
