From the recording Riversdale
A reflective poem about the unreliable ownership of memory, where childhood recollection is assembled from colour, objects and fragments of experience. Beneath its humour and nostalgia lies a quieter uncertainty: whether the memories we carry belong entirely to us, or have been subtly rewritten by time.
Lyrics
American Parcel
We waited for the school bus under the trees by the river.
Yellow chestnut leaves pasted to the pavement.
I smoked a ‘Superman’ sweet cigarette. Mother jerked the kitchen curtain.
Behind the stone blocks, a metre of bamboo split the air, like the hum of a golf club.
I pulled my hand away, the headmistress’s face flooded with beetroot juice.
We sat at the initialled desks and inkwells of those who came before,
and I daydreamed of America.
At 4pm, all punched up on the red kitchen table,
lay the mummy of masking tape,
its run of serrated edges.
The stamps read: ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’,
‘Elizabeth Blackwell’, ‘Bicentennial Era’ and ‘Shrine of Democracy’.
We dived into the lucky box,
‘Charleston Chew’, ‘Big Hunk’, ‘Tootsie Roll’, ‘Pop Rocks’.
‘Neon Orange Flared Trousers’ and ‘Funky Floral T-shirts’.
Oh boy—we’ll be bulldozed if we wear these. Mother insisted.
It is not Aunt Harriet’s risky rascals
we remember.
After my mother’s funeral, in 2017,
I was surprised to hear Cousin John say,
‘We got one too.’