Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

The clean-cut bloke whispers out the side of his mouth:

‘She’s a newsreader in Sydney now, mate.

Looks good, ay? Talk to her. Seriously,

she likes tall guys.’

Jimmy scrolls through his phone then stumbles over.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi.’

It takes her half a second

to scan him and figure out

all she needs to know.

She asks anyway, ‘What school did you go to?’

Jimmy replies and she nods,

before turning her head,

ever so slightly,

away.

He looks puzzled,

and asks in a loud, clear voice

‘Do you like cars?’

holding out a picture of the Dodge on his phone

in one hand like a child cupping a butterfly.

She continues to stare away,

at a point somewhere far in the distance –

something of intense interest there.

He puts the phone back in his pocket

and stumbles away,

hearing laughter in the background.

He feels someone run up next to him.

It’s the clean-cut guy,

who drops a hand on his shoulder.

‘Sorry about that, mate. She’s a snob.

No hard feelings, ay? Say hi to Solomon for me.’

Jimmy shrugs the hand away.

The game’s wired,

just like Dialect said in his song.

But Jimmy strides ahead with one purpose in mind.

He goes down a set of stairs

with a single halogen globe swinging

and he’s in a small club.

The beat

of ScHoolboy Q ‘Man of the Year’

uncoils beneath him like a serpent,

then wraps him up,

swallowing him.

He is drenched in wave after wave of frosty synth,

bouncing, running his hand along the skittering drum pattern,

falling headlong into the bloodstream.

‘I’m the man of the year!’ he yells.

* * *

Jimmy’s in line for burritos

behind an enormous figure,

whose head is nearly at the height

of a light fitting.

Jimmy’s eyes are closing,

tiredness and liquor

taking hold,

and he trips into the man,

who turns sharply

and catches him beneath the armpits.

Jimmy is suddenly looking into a pair

of surreal, bright eyes,

so green they could be Ironlak Cameleon.

Sin One.

Before he realises it,

he’s shaking the man’s hand,

reeling off his favourite moments from Sin One’s career.

Instead of freaking out,

the enormous man smiles kindly,

‘Wanna sit down, bro?’

Jimmy nods.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jimmy. Well, James.’

They begin to talk.

Sin One tells Jimmy

he can see pain in him,

but resilience too,

that he has to work hard

and leap the hurdles in front of him.

Sin One tells him of his own struggles in America,

where people treated him like an idiot or second-class citizen,

reminding him constantly that the US

was the mecca of hip hop.

Jimmy tells him about his troubles with his father,

about buying the car.

He scrambles in his pockets for headphones,

and plays one of his beats for Sin One,

who bobs his head.

Sin One tells Jimmy that he is true hip hop,

someone who has made something from nothing,

made beauty from the bricks.

Jimmy grabs a napkin,

a perfect white square with a cactus logo on it,

and hands it to Sin One.

Sin One signs it with a flourish,

and the ink soaks into the paper,

but the tag is still visible.

SIN ONE

On the way home,

Jimmy can’t help smiling

and keeps reaching into his pocket

to touch the napkin.

He tries to remember

the reason Sin One named himself that –

it wasn’t a graff thing,

even though it sounded like one.

It was something about the original sin of Australia.

In the morning,

dozens of hellish belltowers

are clanging in Jimmy’s head.

Then he remembers the signed napkin

and smiles.

It isn’t on his bedside.

He leaps up,

unsteady, still a bit drunk,

and begins to turn his room upside down looking for it.

Eventually,

he finds a similar napkin

a perfect square with a cactus on it,

but it isn’t signed.

The night before he dies, Ulysses dreams of a great va’a, a huge dugout canoe full of men carving moonlit iridescent waves led by a navigator on the prow. Ulysses is one of the oarsmen, his muscles full of their previous strength, hauling a massive wooden paddle. Jimmy and Solomon huddled at his feet. He hears the navigator yell that there are no clouds to guide by, that he is searching for the perfect channel but can’t seem to find it. Ulysses is sweating, sweating so much that he thinks he will pass out. It is inexplicably hot. He looks up and sees that where there should be ocean there is only fire.

A biro sketch

When she hands it to me,

her eyes are green flags –

fear? love? warning?

It’s me

on a black sand beach,

clouds roiling,

the whole drawing black and white,

red paint drips on the border.

No chick’s ever done something like this for me,

besides a sickly R&B song

a girl made in high school

called ‘Big Brown Boy’.

Jimmy says it looks nothing like me.

Can’t let him get me down, but.

Not today.

I’ve got a plan,

a present for the kids

for their hard work.

I fold up the picture neatly.

Scarlett and I have never been to the beach together.

Dead bees

The streets are covered in them.

No one knows why.

Jimmy says that madness is a snowball.

My lungs are growing

Tar and nicotine out,

the world in,

the summer sky and all the good that’s in it.

My bro reckons I’m walking different, talking different.

I wouldn’t eat Oporto’s with him yesterday

cos of my diet

and he almost tried to fight me.

The kids are practising layups

and I’m kicking pegs out of the earth

on the sideline.

What are these things?

Toby’s not here much.

When he is,

he shoots the ball like shit on purpose,

looks at his feet when he runs.

Today,

he is facing the road,

cross-legged,

pinching the heads off daisies and dandelions.

He looks back at the court

and our eyes meet.

That look.

Like Jimmy.

The next day,

he doesn’t come.

Or the day after that.

But Amosa’s All-Stars are booming.

Sponsored by a local kebab shop,

we have red jerseys now.

Slick as,

logo designed by a graff writer I know.

My palace,

my kingdom.

I am not just fluid,

I am fluidity.

I am not just immortal,

I am immortality.

‘Good day?’ from bottom bunk to top, Gabe directs his question to Aleks’s reflection in the stainless steel mirror. The television is on. With an Australian flag behind him, Crawford announces that he will contest for a seat at the next election, if he gets the backing of his party. Aleks changes the channel and a white comedian in blackface comes on.

‘Good? Dunno about that, brother. Busy, but. Been on the phone most of it.’ Aleks vaults down off the bunk and squats on the floor excitedly, using a stiff index finger to draw imaginary lines. ‘Here, brother. Here’s where I could plant the vines. And here, I could build a workshop to process the grapes.’

‘Have you ever been a farmer?’

‘Nah, but my granddad was. I’d learn fast enough. As long as you take pride in hard work, the rest follows, brother. What did you do, back home?’