Casketts Store

Charli Wiggill

Retro architecture
hip, but forty years
late and musty
crumbling concrete,
square root of antiquity;
monthendrushdawnstheday

shelvesbulging with stuff;
bolts of brightfabric
parotted and exoticked beyond
a dusty bushveld experience,
soaps and sanitaries, cheap clothing
and floridfrocks, loadsofbrownbread,
lanternwicksbythemetre

binspiled with
staplegrains;
mealie-meal and stickygoldensugar,
maltcloudschoking
the humidair
mopani worms, sundried
in a grimace of potent protein

greycast-iron three-legged pots,
fat-tackie bicycles with
optional mirrors and bells,
44 gallondrumsof
cookingoil and paraffin –
cutting a scalpel-line through
the nostrils

up on all eightyears of tippy-toe
i peer over the expansive
counterplain,
amassedeagerfaces awaiting their turn
acocoaveneeroffaces
only skindeep
patiently a little closer to service

sweatynotes dispensed from bras
meagrecoins gently squeezed by
untying the corners of a spent cloth –
so pastoralscene continues
exchanges of warmgreetingsliterally,
shinynewgoods and bloodedcash

andthenheappears:
Mr. nonamebrandvanillaflavour strutsin –
cocoamass melts to subservience,
a sterileservile sundae of apology
for being there, no, for being
shufflingoutofthewayforgreatbrashsuperiority

LitNet: 09 December 2005

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