if velo wears a cardboard crown then surely vera appears draped in green. her streets lean lovingly into nature strips, storm drains and kerbs. through electric streets traffic whirs as through a blender, anti-clockwise, in unsprawled packets. and the ever insisting mosquito, its visa due to expire momentarily then mysteriously validated, like a light switch turned on and then off. the corner’s perspective affords an uninterrupted miasma of melaleukas, dreaming the next layer of sky.
vera the mosquito virus, planes of insistence, blood for eggs. wings like torn curtains, legs a spangle of sticks above a fireplace, teepee supports, the trail of my breath steps on which she climbs, seeking skin hosts. vera, city of the guarded woman behind electricity grids. skin, the steps on which shadows climb seeking fruit and the drip’s amnesia. erotic phone cards and the leopard’s skin pass outs, shingles on a sparsely-lit shore, etcetera of the intact glycerine dawn.
vera the night patrol drone, seeking scores, transit vehicle hopping chalk in hand marking limbs and electricities with time prints, watercoloured and glowing. blankets of a never-ending eternity pendant, pulsing in the armpit of her affections. unknowing glances and pop-up explanations from a guidebook long since bleeped out, digitised and smoking in the ruins of information.
vera stoops to inspect the shorn blade of glass under the pawn-shop’s eerie signwritten name. midnight on the streetcar, someone sings about the last time rain drops fell on this place, the last time velo was lit up – rifled, the pawn-shop’s contents spewing out onto the street, the inevitable ghost gathers, seeking stillness from curtains blown through open windows. shattering mirrors.
vera the shout of the drone bee’s entrance, scattering fluids across dim tables in whoever asked for it’s style. peeping from behind a coverall chequered, games played by the suspicious with the minds of the feeble. stickly, endowed with thorns, vera the night’s epistle thankful, ever seeking a haven, homing in. night bomber with daylight’s daring, vanguard of love.
vera still as ashes in a jar, the shift of the rubble against itself, her lover rolls over in bed, disrupting the warm drifts of their fitful sleep, facefully stealing time from a weary monitor. shrugging off the tally of days she rises, driven by whistles, engineered to move fluently, like conversational french. dishes in the remainder of yesterday’s food box, morning and her companions climb the stairs to find her already seated, adjusting the hem of a crumpled grey dress.
vera blissful and breathless in daylight’s profusion, singing through grass streets stretching seawards to the pipelines, shoves the matter deep in her coat pocket and marches, unfollowed, along cool bitumen avenues, her feet seeking skin prints in the improbably husked net.