Rear-windscreen soars ahead in status vehicle tint, against which letters in masking tape tatter: TOOT TO GIVE DAN THE BOOT —only some tape has come away or a wiper obscures so that B becomes R. There are those who would if they could either way, I guess, but perhaps don’t know now whether to toot. No horns sound across the lanes, in either case. Behind me the baby peels mandarins she won’t eat, admires her own toes in reflection. These are ‘donut days’: no new cases in the garden state, and time before the premier’s fall from holiday patio—time unfolding, eliding— It’s true in this state we like our racism covert, thanks, we like it polite— Beyond the radio’s fizz of numbers & brighter airings, the state commits cultural genocide—another highway cutting three minutes out of 800 years or its inverse: that is to say decimating what the colony has plundered, heedless/knowing/ ceaseless/ly. The light is yellow is green is falling orange across us, encapsulated between twisting figures of tea-tree & box gum, detritus of citrus skin & pith amassing. Arundhati R wrote the pandemic as a portal but I don’t know how to hold the image—where to meet it.
From: Vol.09 N.01 – A Poetics of Rights
Windscreen
by
Jo Langdon