Poetry

Desorientation a Deux

Graeme Hetherington

I wouldn’t care to live again

In Frederick Street, Hobart, since there

My Aunty Viv, who’d fled the West

Coast’s mucking in and levelling off,

 

Its tainted, smelly cosiness

Inherited from convict days,

Became Aunt Vivienne. A first

Year student, lost to books and drink,

 

I boarded with her for a time,

Shared putting on the dog and sat

As English lord and lady at

The opposite ends of a long

 

Black dining table, where I heard

How once a lawyer, now a judge,

Had squired her to Gone with the Wind.

In bed I’d read, if not far gone,

 

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony,

And on my very last night there

Perked over the chenille bedspread,

Together cleaning up the mess.