Joe McClusky

Walking the dry Darling River in a

bottomless canvas canoe, I stumbled

upon the bones of someone I knew,

on account of the thong, black

with a pink border, faded by the sun,

but that was Joe McClusky, always

one can short of a door-stopping slab,

the attention getting champion of

Humpy Flat by doing the crazy,

shame defying exhibitions of his

inner self for tourists and locals

who’d stray from the sun’s glare

and stare at this shadow, a pale skin

held together by the bones of a

dying man forty, with a rude head

and a mouth of algoid rottenness

chattering with word rhythms

to dust swirling about in a dry street,

the skin shadow performing his

Boo Dance, like the Brolga dance

of the indigenous, the distraught

turn away, astonished by this poor

demented soul so damned in by life.

He was abandoned as a child by an

alcoholic mum and by an alcoholic

dad, both of whom ended up dying

in the Darling River just like

Joe McClusky has gone and done;

May Death grant their souls a decent rest.