Exits not taken

Arja Salafranca

The sky was a dark stain of
muddy purple,
as I drove home this Friday night.
The Coca-Cola sign blinked at me
from the round Ponte building
in the distance.
Jim Croce was singing on my car radio
as cars soared past
in a perpetual rush at life.
The end of a day,
endings, beginnings,
the exits of the freeway
that I no longer take
because they lead to my past,
other lives, people long since
out of it.
They flashed past me as I drove.
Another time I would've been going
somewhere else.
Endings, beginnings,
life's full of them,
becoming one,
blurring into a mass
of exits not taken.
The sky is a dark stain of
muddy purple
as I drive tonight,
I don't know where I'm going yet.
It's the interim,
between the end,
and the waiting for a beginning.

Hillbrow's Festival of Meat

by Arja Salafranca

A pair of ribs hang together
in isolation from the rest of their body.
Red and pink
packages displayed in the fridge,
neatly wrapped.
These raw pieces
waiting to be taken home,
made brown and disguised
for human consumption.

The Hillbrow Meat Festival
is a shop clean and yellow
celebrating
technology that can grow cattle
on hormones, keeps them inactive
to let the fat build.
We're capable of taking away their babies
for human consumption.

Far away from my home
lies the abattoir
and a head,
still screaming blood,
sits on the wet, red floor.

Far away from that abattoir,
the rest of its body,
on my plate,
ribs and all,
covered in a gravy,
surrounded by potatoes and peas
satabbed into by a fork
and something more ominous,
that I can't define.

On the way to work

by Arja Salafranca

On the way to work
I see a dead dog lying on the pavement,
one leg lifted in rigor mortis,
a meaty chunk of shoulder flesh exposed.
There are woven baskets for sale
on the opposite side of the road, and round barstools.
The sun burns my driving arm crisp brown.
A desperate woman sells wooden bowls,
comes up to my window. I flick my
eyes away behind mascara-flecked
sunglasses. Her mouth drops a little.
There are men selling bags of avocados
and boxes of green grapes. I say no.

Driving to work I detour
through poverty.
The houses are small, shabby, paint peels
and fades away. Walls are not high,
and many are crumbling. People sit
in their yards and watch rerouted
traffic bump through the neighbourhood,
observing the unusual event as if it were a parade.
The shops are hot, dark holes. The children amuse
each other by buying sweets, walking,
playing in the streets.
It's a different world here,
a world I've been warned against.

Driving home, one night, a dog leaps
into the dark road. I swerve to avoid its black
jumping shape. It's limping, sick,
frightened or confused.
A group of men stand nearby, laughing
loudly, clustered in groups by their cars.
I put my foot hard on the pedal,
the dog disappears, defeated,
limping back into the darkness.