2000 winner

Lajamanu morning

there is the storekeeper and there the store he keeps where

the green paint peels from the warm tin walls and all the

people seem to come at once on cheque day so that all such

days seem the same and the dusty doors grate as they slide

and open again to the waiting land which sifts inside in a

brown tide borne on the hot desert breeze condensing on

shelves and tins and packets and jars and all the things that

the store truck brings each week like biscuits and bread and

corned beef tins and cheap clothes expensive bullets

and chinese plastic toys and processed cheese and sugar for all

the diabetics and salt for the kidneys and tinned meat laced

with liquescent fat for all the ripening heart attacks and

coca cola for the children who chase each other round and

round the empty pallet stacks out the back where the leather

dogs sleep in the sun and the toyotas go and they come and

the kardiya argue about who's to blame and the old women

sit in the shade with things like tea cosies on their heads but

without any shame and watch the kids and draw patterns in

the dust with their digging sticks while the young second

wives feed fat babies because they must on plump and sun

warmed breasts with the flies crawling round the babies

eyes and ears and the pus from infections dripping like tears

and the young men wondering where they will go hunting

next when the motor car is fixed and the policeman they

don't like has given up his tricks and gone into town where

he belongs and the old men can sing their songs in peace at

the business camp with the young fellas who will be men

soon if the business men come up from Yuendumu when

the land council meeting ends if the rains don't come and

the sun and the sun and the sun just keeps shining on us all

by David Kirkby