BARBECUE IN THE SUBURBS

(late 1970s)

Sausages, deceitful odalisques, brown

and dancing in their own fat, burning, spitting

rain charms as the gods of weather and smoke

parley in secret languages.

The adults decamp in colonial demarcations,

men drinking beer and women

performing Eleusinian kitchen mysteries.

Rainclouds roll in like a tide.

Screen doors bang

and a tween rabble tumbles out

over grass seared to sacking,

scrabbling, yelling, squabbling.

So then

the gathered close on the smouldering altar

of sacrificial meats,

engaged in the rites of familial piety:

marriage, adolescence, scolding, and the libation

of the Lares and Penates with cold beer –

a few old friends

who know it’s going to rain, but won’t speak of it,

and the murmuring gods gather around the sacrifice

like fat-eyed blowflies.

Earlier version published in Landfall, Spring 2009