Sonar

From a drunken cruise on the harbour

comes a bouncing melody: I wanna

have sex on the beach. You can

see it on everyone’s (anyone’s)

mind as the summertime trees nod assent

in the Botanic Gardens,

their scent wafting up to the nostrils

of skyscrapers breathing in fumes,

pumping out bucks,

relaying UV to the ant-sized joggers

who bound up and down along the shoreline

on sand grains jostling for legroom.

Above them, birds, checking out the goods

of a small grey woman staring at the bridge,

thinking: I wanna walk across water

like sound, as her skin remembers a distant 

prickling, another season,

a sun and a wind that lifts her hairs.

(published in Overland, 2012)