Title: Alabama

Author: Virginia Were

In: Sport 9: Spring 1992

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, November 1992, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 9: Spring 1992

♣ Virginia Were — Alabama

page 134

Virginia Were

Alabama

I'll tell you how he tests the broken roof
of a collapsed house, stands on the
corrugated iron to take photographs.
I'll tell you about his quiet
concentration, splinters driven
up under his nails, seeds caught
in his clothes,
                     his hair.
How his father taught him to take
photographs at the age of five,
taught him to shoot.
Some things they could do together.

I'll tell you about his
Eastern European great-grandfather
who went to America and settled in
                                                      the South.
When his brother was murdered,
he went to the police station and said,
I want to see the man who killed
my brother.
The police asked him to hand over
his gun—they knew he carried one.
Then you can see the man who killed
your brother.
He refused. No I don't want to see
the man who killed my brother.
And he left.

I'll tell you about his father,
how he collects with a jeweller's eyepiece
page 135 —coins, stamps, medals, guns.
He told his son about the counterfeit
notes the Nazis used during the war.
A small attic in London.
I'll tell you exactly where to go.
Ask to see them, he said.
And they were there.

How he said to his son one morning,
hung over and sick, working in his father's
office. Just looked at him, smoke trickling
from his mouth and said,
                                      you look like you've
been out drinking and fucking all night.
To which he, the son, replied,
yes, I have. Then shut the door and slept,
his feet up on the walnut desk.
His father an accomplice, not letting anyone
into the room until his son recovered.

His mother's in here too,
and his first camera—given him
by his father.
                   Years later destroyed
by a planetary rage—hers—
a rage so large, so wandering, so erratic
even today he can't comprehend it.
The camera now a broken body he shoves
into the serviceable darkness inside
his wardrobe.
Wraps it in a dark cloth so
he won't have to look.

He stands on the broken roof,
tests it to see if it will hold
his weight—the collapsed roof,
page 136 the thing that once held
it all together.

I'll tell you how he puts the world
together with his camera.
Sees the variations in light and
dark. The shadow of clouds moving
across a hillside—so fast
he can't quite catch them.
So fast he
                 doesn't
want to.
How he photographs texture—burn
scars on the hillside,
burn scars on the trees.
He sees the eucalypts explode,
flames leaping from one tree
to the next.
The land at Captains Flat
scarred by surface mining,
                                     land
which would once have been
beautiful.

I'll tell you how he photographed
a friend's stomach, the scars of
a motorbike accident—white rails
on his belly, white rails
on his chest.
                    Rails you could climb up on.
He climbs back into pain, the memory of it
on his friend's chest.