Giving Directions to McDonalds

By Kris Hemensley b. 1946 Kris Hemensley

when I’m

braced for a mugging is stranger than the

Eritrean boy asking the question

outside Clifton Hill station. The skinnier

for baggies he’s hop & a skip

across three lanes following my hand.

No way to countermand him.

No way he’d stay for the whole

story. The ghosts of spray-can gangs

who tagged the length & breadth of the subway

are benign I’d tell him. There’ll be

the odd gutter-crawler in front of the House

of Love. Keep walking. The garage’ll be closed

but in summertime a gaggle

of mechanics will punt a football

in the road there. One missing his mark

is bound to call an Eritrean

to kick it back. Ignore them.

Continue to a far flung franchise

of the American dream. Once it was

the dull red brick of the United Kingdom

pub where the last of the blessed

aged quicker than most

on Victoria Bitter.

Now it’s the McDonalds

of this convergence of worlds

in whose vicinity I’m more

or less lost.

Kris Hemensley, “Giving Directions to McDonalds” text and audio from My Life in Theatre, River Road Press, Audio CD & Booklet, 2009, by permission of River Road Press and the poet. Copyright © 2009 by Kris Hemensley.

Source: Verse Magazine (2007)

Giving Directions to McDonalds

Giving Directions to McDonalds

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