Almanac Poetry: ‘In With Me’ – Tommy Mallet

In With Me

 

The boss has paired me with
two backpackers
for a couple of weeks.

 

They both work hard,
but the job is dangerous, backbreaking,
babysitting them ruins all rhythm.

 

Having to talk to them
on lunch breaks,
and the long drives back up and out
to bitumen,
is tiring.

 

“How’s she cutting?” cheers the
happy little Irishman,
every morning;

 

Which translates to;
“G’day, how the bloody hell
are ya!?”

 

Followed by more, relentless
happy questions.

 

*****

 

Loading up the delivery,
pre-dawn,
without them,
in simple, silent rain and drizzle,
unrushed,
filthy, taking in everything,

 

was a sigh without end,

 

wet, cold,
listening to the last owl call
of the night,

 

a pocket of simple, timeless, glory.

 

*****

Days become a life,
truck stop grime defeats me.

 

Filthy parking bays, littered with the waste of
lazy options;
sugar drink bottles, fried food wrappers.

 

I slot in, tired, still wearing mountain airs,
checking each strap;

 

muddy fern trunks,
tags,
bald tires,

 

a city and

 

state to push through.

 

As always, I enter the tucker shop via
the back,
because it’s the shortest route.

 

Cages of cardboard, garbage skips, bins, dirty mops,
milk creates for a quick staff
smoke.

 

This quarter of every shop, business,
city,
not shown to customers,

 

but there.

 

*****

 

Inside, I flirt with any one
of six middle-aged counter duffs –

 

all overweight and wearing
glasses –

 

without knowing why.

 

So they might cram
that little more food,
into my roll?

 

Take a dollar off,
as if a dollar will save me?

 

To be something slightly more
than another fucking consumer,
consuming?

 

To escape myself, this moment?

 

To make a hard-working woman
smile?

 

Who knows?

 

*****

 

of them fancies me;
an abrupt Arminian,
with fake nails,
who goes on cruise ships
where she sees;

 

KC and the Sunshine Band,
Leo Sayer,

 

Suzi Quatro.

 

All the oldies, squinted at
with bad eyes
and enough alcohol,
to blur away edges,

 

as if they and you and your friends
never left their glory.

 

*****

 

“How’s your kid, Darl?” she asks.

 

“Mine are up and gone,” she says.

 

“I’m single now, but they
come over sometimes,” she says.

 

“They don’t visit my husband.
Good riddance,” she says.

 

“I wasn’t going to put up
with, y’know,
that, y’know, abusive garbage any longer.”

 

*****

 

As I leave she calls me “Honey.”

 

They all call us
“Darling” or “Honey.”

 

If
we make them smile.

 

“You have a good day, Darling.”

 

“You have a great afternoon, Honey.”

 

*****

 

Leaving, I avoid my reflection; another
well-worn,
orange
safety shirt wearing seagull,
chip in mouth,
strutting over nothing,
towards his oil-baked machinery.

 

This commonness, hidden
in pigeon struts,
and airs of diesel-stained importance.

 

Shallow echoes of pretty
much nothing.

 

*****

 

The truck stop has no romance
to me,
just impossibly weighted repetition.

 

No humour of Buckowski,
poetry of Waits,
those glorious fakers.

 

Only Harvey Peckar understood
the banality.

 

An angry, poor Jew, working as
a file clerk,
writing unpopular comics.

 

*****

 

I look at other truckies,
entering KFC, Maccas,
Subway,
the takeaway.

 

Suddenly, I can’t bare wearing my safety top
a moment fucking longer.

 

It’s cooking me,
pointless
behind a wheel.

 

Pointless!

 

Just another excuse to dehumanize us,
uniform us.

 

I take it off in
still-aired panic.

 

A flurry of tennis elbows,
stiff shoulders
and sap-stained, knotted
fingers.

 

*****

 

A black t-shirt reveals itself,
damp with rain from the ridge,
and sweat from the sun,
pressing through a relentless inland windshield.

 

A nice t-shirt,

 

its left tit a photo
of myself,
writing agent, and lawyer,
when the family and I
visited LA,

 

sent months later
as a present.

 

Place and date under that;
California, ’22.

 

A moment of
something other.

 

Exciting!

 

It was, and remains a good gift,
two fine people, a lifetime away
from 40 years of dirt,

 

slipped on
occasionally,
near dawn,
under battered, stiff work gear.

 

“G’day Matt, G’day Marti,” I
sometimes whisper,
just to bring them with me.

 

*****

 

The three of us leave the
truck stop together.

 

Frozen in nice LA café and killer
company smile,
they watch me
eat my sloppy tucker
as I merge ute and trailer
into the anonymous wash
of five lanes
to nowhere and every nowhere.

 

To here-and-now,
to next week’s delivery.

 

Life on freeways.

 

*****

 

Neither of them judge as I nod off
at the wheel
one or twice,
or comment of the pigsty within;
writing pad buried
under work tools
and wrappers,

 

but in there, with us,
moving.

 

My body, ute, a lucky break,
something’s got to give
eventually.

 

 

 

 

 

More poetry from Tommy Mallet can be read Here.

 

 

More poetry from Almanac Poetry can be read HERE

 

 

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