Scum
By Claire Cao
Published 1 January 2021
Metal and palms
slick with sweat, chewed lips slick
with blood. Hesitate even
for a second and they’ll all hoot:
‘You can’t hack it you can’t hack it bro’
Fingers thick as Twisties
grips hard knees high. Almoooost. Reeboks
squeak against scaffolding. Coils of hair whip
in wind, Medusa coronets of blue-bellied
black snakes
‘K look down now. It’s the sticks ay?’
2166. Tableau of flaking fences, rotting see-saws
splattered with galah shit, muddy kicks swinging from power
lines, latchkey kids with rat-tails and mullets and K-pop fringes
doing donuts in Honda Civics circles and circles of scratched
black earth & swelling smoke
The world so open and alive that our mouths
echo open too, expelling
mongulated choruses of bobcat caterwauls. Pings
off faraway calls of brothers, sisters, cousins; feral as
This poem is part of a suite titled Scum.