Carol Jenkins
the king of fakey
Glides backwards, speed being
cut out in milliseconds, the grain of paint
on handrails, his bearings quick
inside their wheels. Gravity gives up on him
having lost the argument with centrifugal
force, the noise runs a whirring ladder
that pirouettes, inverts & somersaults
we see the gnarly cuts, clean moves, sweet
air, the brittle bouncings from moving gear,
mad drops, runs up the wall and then the king
stops, nudges back his taped together glasses,
smiles, a complicity I nearly can’t believe,
is it knowingness, being bashful or the angle?
Un-bladed is he plain, nearly solid & low on grace.
Field Trip
Patrick, politely asks where I grew up,
then How far is that from the GPO?
Sixty Miles or so. He’s wearing
RM Everything, the keys
of his Father’s Range Rover
snug in his moleskin pocket. Professionally
he asks how much land we have,
and nearly doesn’t flinch when I say
about a quarter of an acre -
Fibro Country.
Carol Jenkins’ first book of poetry Fishing in the Devonian (Puncher & Wattmann, 2008) was short listed for the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2007 she established River Road Press (www.riverroadpress.net) which produces audio CDs of Australian poetry. You can find her work and links to other publications at her blog Show Me The Treasure (www.showmethetreasure.blogspot.com).
About ‘the king of fakey’, Jenkins writes: “A few years back, my then 14 year old son made me watch a DVD of one of his inline skating heroes, Chris Haffey, describing him as The King of Fakey. I loved the phrase, and also the total immersion the skaters had in the Kingdom of Skate. Fakey, as I found out, is the practice of skating backwards, but its ambiguity is a truly wonderful thing.”