Issue
#3

May
2009 

a poem by Paul C. Stevens

Suicide Jenny Raises Bail

When Suicide Jenny dragged a blade
in a nice straight line down her thin
pale wrists because Phearless Phil
didn't love her enough,
she splashed warm love freely, everywhere.
Phil knew the drill, led her outside:
the ambulance had sirened up--
Jenny, topless, silent, both of them
burqaed in blood. Johnny and me
just stood and gawked, straight away knowing
the bulls would be screaming
round to that crashpad, for sure. We had to split.

We headed to the lights
Of amphetamine Kings Cross,
slept in the park, each nursing a bottle of beer,
nursing the night and the crowds,
nursing the world and the dirt,
and the sirens, and white
fields of white and white and
Mum's hand white stroking my head white.

Uniforms sauntered into our dreams,
casually kicked us straight back to
full-color big-screen awake, awake,
o my brothers, to be vagged, dragged,
bagged, down to Central Courthouse,
the holding tank, steaming us slow
in piss and tobacco, spew and sweat,
and really hard concrete walls.
Suits said, "Plead guilty, you'll be sweet--
we'll go real easy--suspended sentence."
But the beak didn't like our boyish looks
and our long greasy hair: six months each
to protect Society from back-alley flotsam,
vagrant poets, strip-club Rimbauds,
and suchlike desperados.

When Suicide Jenny heard the news,
stitched and pale, shaken but staunch,
dirty bandage trailing,she rose from her bed,
limped on down to the Cross, sighed,
hitched up her skirt
and hawked her fork
to sailors, to johns just in from the west
seeking golly good times, come one, come all.
Then back to the pub--Jenny passed 'round the hat,
took all that cash, fronted the courthouse,
slammed it all on the desk:
"I've come to bail them out!"
The desk sergeant laughed:
"They're sentenced and long gone--
six months in Long Bay!"

What else could a girl do?
She picked up the money
marched back to the pub,
threw the dollars on the bar:
"I'm shouting everyone a drink!"

© Paul C. Stevens

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