Poems by Michael Hall
Sunday Soul’d
Michael Hall
Published on
page 34 of Tarot #2
(June 2021)
We ride, double
down the street,
lean back, lift—
almost pull a wheelie.
Only the dairy open.
A logging truck blasts through,
rattling the windows
of Harry’s Homekill:
too fast.
Misty rain, the old railway
bridge—
the sound of
piss
on the river.
A fence post
floats by.
At night,
the petrol station
glows;
the kaeaway sign
is a sign.
At school we factorise
and expand, learn
that landscapes keep
changing.
Man, I say, one day,
I’m gonna buy
a brand-new car
and drive the hell far
away as I can.
A used car would do,
she says,
get you just as far.
Me, she says,
I want to
be in a band.
You look like
a drowned dog,
my dad says,
barely turning
when I get back in,
in that strange time
between adolescence
and the evening.