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BACKGROUND MUSIC NOT YOUR SCENE?
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO TURN IT OFF RIGHT HERE!
(It's a generation-gap thing!

This is a real boys' house. In the hall, a stack of empty cardboard boxes, junk mail on floor, shoes and odd socks outside bedrooms, scattered small change. Chaotic bathrooms- damp towels kicked into corners, more smallchange, long-term scum on bath, toilet seat permanently up. Lounge- a few posters blutacked to walls, more empty cardboard boxes. Carpet obscured by newspapers, piles of lauundry, cigarette butts,and associated debris, empty stubbies, the ubiquitous small change, a car-engine-in-progress.... The kitchen; empty fridge, apart from flabby carrots and packets of frozen peas. Cartons of warm milk on bench, plus jumbo tin of caterers' blend coffee, dirty plates, used mugs, packaging rubbish, a phonethqat won't dial properly since something got spilt on it. Only one thing not on bench is space. In the cupboard; deb potato whip, packet soup, instant gravy, sliced white, 3 tins of Milo, 5 packets of assorted stale breakfast cereals. Boys live here. No worries mate. Television works. Toilet flushes. Water runs. Rent gets paid. It'll do. Takeaways again tonight. She'll be right. Boys live here. Published in La Mama Poetica, edited by Mal Morgan, Melbourne University Press, (1989).

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