a
good
woman
she
was a good woman,
knew
her place in the home.
she
was a kind woman,
kind
to everybody:
her brother,
mother,
father.
she cooked them all
a roast dinner
ev’ry Sunday …
I ?
I don’t remember
what I did
at
11.
I have
no reason
to complain
but
I do, anyway.
for here,
my friend no longer sits beside me,
he prefers a distance,
as our conversation had finally decided
to
turn to
something
which I had always wanted it
to
turn to.
and he asks me the question that some would call ‘personal’
and shy away from,
either
to protect
their embarrassment of their minimal earning capacity,
or their deepfelt shame of success at the expense of others.
yes
he asks me what I earn and
I
tell him –
I tell
this contracted nursing assistant
working 12 hr shifts, with minimal, on-site training
I
tell him
that I’m on 15 pounds an hour,
90 pounds a day, for working a six hour day
while others
who have had four years at university
and have chosen certain courses
deemed valuable in capitalist society
are earning much much more than myself.
and he tells me how much he earns –
5 pounds an hr, as a nursing assistant,
who has no real interest
in wanting to understand the ‘class thing’ in capitalism
in all its ugly manifestations,
but to escape to art
for his sake
having completed an art’s degree
deemed less worthy
by capitalist society
than law or It
or bus. management.
and he distances
himself from me,
grows cold,
as capitalism stings his 5 pds/hr ego
and blames me (at 15pds/hr)
while
we speak of
something
in a conversation
which I
had always wanted
to
start
something from.
and still
we wait …
missing
a part
we met
through a mutual
acquaintance
and I was
lured to a
New Age hippy
camp-out for the summer
with the promise
of
hot,
sweaty sex
and my mind
focused on the
hot,
sweaty sex,
while her car,
her,
and me
headed south for Wiseman’s Ferry
and we found
a place to swim
by a river
with a private bank
concealed
by
mangroves
and I watched mudcrabs
freeing themselves
while
she sucked me off
and then
I stopped her …
both of us
in mid-need
and we swam
in the river
before the final drive
to the camp
where we pitched
the tent
and quickly
occupied ourselves
with the
hot,
sweaty sex
promise
thing
and then
I went down on her
and stopped
and
while she waited
I wondered to myself
how she’d lost
one of her
flaps
whether
it had been
to a frustrated woman-hating
lover
who
came before me
or
to an Australian freshwater
piranha
that
the marine biologists
had not
yet
warned us
about.