Deliverance

And the window remains ajar
all through summer.
Once in a while, a little black bat finds its way in
and you hunch under a ripped twenty dollar quilt
‘til its devious echoes bring release.

Leaden possums creak
like bobbies on the beat,
flexing the leather soles of their imaginary
size twelve shoes,
and kookaburras cackle their criminal mouths
at the deepening no-turning-back dark.
Soon, you hear slummocky rain
slip-slopping sullenly, slimily,
off the tops of pocked cherry leaves.

A banjo twangs deliverance
on a broken CD player,
populating the room with
lust and its inbred shadows.

This bedroom has been exorcised
of its goitrous ghost.
The thing was a round, black void
that terrified us
(my sister, my mother)
in dreams.
I might have ended up a handful of slump muck.
Audacity was our one defence.

These dewy days, the only dark is this soft, suede,
hornifying hour
that smudges its moist mouth-print
against the pane of watchfulness
at my still-open window.