“New Year’s Day”
Voiceworks — 2008
In a Chinese restaurant, curved into plastic chairs
we let last night’s fizz slide down our backs, pooling
around our feet like sweat around the water bottle.
Paper cups and tobacco roll-ups cluster in the gutters.
This day is a pause — beside us a little boy
smears the aquarium with fried-rice,
nose stubbed on the glass between the whiskers
of his fingers. He watches the chef, singlet leopard-spotted
with stains, worry over the pallid lobsters. Their companion
grouper burps glumly. It’s unfair, the child says.
No one should have to die on New Year’s Day.