Birkenhead (4.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Birkenhead

Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?

– Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

If you can’t park in Birkenhead
where can you park?
Slip Inn

Play the Big Game
Dollars & Dealers
money talks

but bullshit walks
exchange the orange baby
for the panda bear

Since the All Blacks lost
’s such a hassle
two mouths crooked so

mother & daughter
Full prog
& bikini underarm

Black on white
& white on brown

Breaking the norm

[First published in Spin 49 (2005): 60-62].