Martyn Halsall
Bottle Stalls
All the way south from the Angolan border
bottle stalls slur their names across the scrub:
Seven to Seven, Give Me A Hand, Chimanaco’s.
The truckers drink there, sheltering from the metal sky.
Chocolate dust churns and settles across bleached kraals.
Air becomes tanned to the rust colours of wrecked trucks
that never arrived at Normal Fish and Chips,
Manyana Special Number Two or Be With The Time.
Donkeys have parked themselves on shimmering tarmac,
immune to the mirages’ flirting invitations:
Special Feeling, Love Me Station, Push And Pull.
Cattle stoop near the Green Joy Corner Restaurant.
A group of bushmen lope east, tracking cloud,
following the rumour of new rains south of Tsumeb.
They ignore Women Paradise, More Than One Number Three,
Hu Hu City Bar, four hundred miles from a city,
Seven Seas Up and Down, one hundred miles inland,
Royal Trading The Best; Welcome Mississippi.
They carry spears and a kettle, they scent damp wind,
navigate by lightning flickering the width of horizons.
They watch the shredded clouds stippling high veldt,
wait for the gusts that trip to scatter thunder.
The smashed sky reels and tumbles with its brimming glass:
Sunset Number One, Okawa Wet Store: Glory!
bottle stalls slur their names across the scrub:
Seven to Seven, Give Me A Hand, Chimanaco’s.
The truckers drink there, sheltering from the metal sky.
Chocolate dust churns and settles across bleached kraals.
Air becomes tanned to the rust colours of wrecked trucks
that never arrived at Normal Fish and Chips,
Manyana Special Number Two or Be With The Time.
Donkeys have parked themselves on shimmering tarmac,
immune to the mirages’ flirting invitations:
Special Feeling, Love Me Station, Push And Pull.
Cattle stoop near the Green Joy Corner Restaurant.
A group of bushmen lope east, tracking cloud,
following the rumour of new rains south of Tsumeb.
They ignore Women Paradise, More Than One Number Three,
Hu Hu City Bar, four hundred miles from a city,
Seven Seas Up and Down, one hundred miles inland,
Royal Trading The Best; Welcome Mississippi.
They carry spears and a kettle, they scent damp wind,
navigate by lightning flickering the width of horizons.
They watch the shredded clouds stippling high veldt,
wait for the gusts that trip to scatter thunder.
The smashed sky reels and tumbles with its brimming glass:
Sunset Number One, Okawa Wet Store: Glory!
Page(s) 52
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