Supermarketing My son is nearly a man I see his teeth grinding on his longing for escape working it like a piece of gum that he hides in his cheek when he smiles at me politely When he was three, and four each Thursday we would buy the supermarketing together by supermarketing together, he and I a ritual so treasured it required both noun and verb of our own devising He would skip along the aisles putting items in our trolley with ostentatious goodness revelling in the praise of strangers We would queue for the checkout manned by Robert an older fellow with a kind smile and an earring My son would lift the supermarketing onto the conveyor belt and Robert would exclaim, every Thursday that my son was a Great Helper and every Thursday my son would look shyly pleased I can think of other words both noun and verb that fit this story Real words, that we didn’t make up Mother is one Another is too obvious to point out to a clever young man grinding his teeth I hope that when he is an old man he remembers skipping along supermarket aisles and Robert
Equator At night I sprawl naked on mother’s belly she belches at the touch of flesh wet and lecherous Fungal spores land on glistening skin and sprout! Illicit congress to a torch song of whiplash storms and screaming frogs blades chopping, chopping over the bed At first I felt uneasy without sheets A child of peaceful, cooling nights release required safe covering of chest, legs, feet But now, beneath lightning-scorched roof I sleep skin to air skin to wind skin to water.
Liz Bennett works as a mediator in the remote tropical city of Darwin, Australia. She was a finalist in the 2019 NT Literary Awards, a poetry place-getter in the 2012 Australian Cancer Council Arts Awards, and has poetry and other writing published or forthcoming in Not Very Quiet, be:longing, Stereo Stories, Sparks of Calliope, Lighten Up Online and the anthology Imagining the Real: Australian Writing in the Nuclear Age (ABC Enterprises).
