just it was a porsche / & the registration was
OM+NAMASTE / the artist said he only put the flying pig
in the top right hand corner ‘cause the landscape he’d
painted said nothing—man serves the interests of no
creature except himself* / the LED billboard across the
highway asks if i’m going home to the bathroom of my
dreams / i’m not / but i try not to let it get me down / what
happens in depression is you can barely lift your head off
the pillow / my friend kazza pushes hers around in a
wheelbarrow all day/ sometimes she talks about throwing
the TV out the window / one night she did / it landed in
the infinity pool / sank to the bottom / settled in the wet
graveyard of her rusting dreams / one time i bought
sneakers that promised to ultra-boost my DNA & claimed
that legends lived f—o—r—e—v—e—r / when i took
them off / everything was still the same / the secret to my
pasta sauce is to add more oil than the exxon valdez spill /
no one can believe how tasty it is / rich cunts gorge on it /
leave the splattered consequences of their greed for others
to mop up / in my father’s house there are many rooms /
but also empty bottles / i stuff crumpled messages inside
them / cast them into the black swell of the irish sea / i
never hear back / the truth is i don’t care so much about
not going home to the bathroom of my dreams/ but i care
about my buddy kazza / i care about her drowned TV &
her rusting dreams / i care about her wheelbarrow / the
lonely squeaks of it as she pushes it around.
*quote by Napoleon the pig in Orwell’s Animal Farm
Ali Whitelock is a Scottish poet living in an old church out west with her French, low-carb, chain smoking husband. She’s published three collections of poetry & her work has appeared in journals & mags in the USA, Australia, Scotland & Ireland. She’s especially delighted to be most recently published in Verity La La, a magazine she has forever admired. She’s also published a memoir about growing up in Scotland in the bizarre & brutal kingdom we call home, which was launched to critical acclaim at Sydney Writers Festival & also in the UK. She likes cats, but also dogs — & while she’s always gravitated towards red wine, lately it’s been white. Go figure. More here (about the writing, not the wine).