Member-only story

This is Not a Fire Sale

poem

Vic Spandrio
Scrittura
2 min readApr 27, 2024

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photo by author

I tell myself
this is not a fire sale
not to discount
the hollow chest
of drawers
frowning at the lip
the toppled stroller
or smiling blue horse
on the mouldy carpet floor
where a child
learned to walk
thru the makeshift aisles
my jerk neck and eyes
gloss over bones
of paperback books that look
like they could talk
and the walls
with wallpaper
decorated in purple-red hearts
with little more to say
laid on plastic coffins
of electric cadavers,
like a flag
for a felled gum tree
the surgeon river
cut with brown blade
searching for a pulse,
in this paradise
awash
no price tag
can recount the cost
no government funded grant
or heartfelt speech
can divert the maggot flies
from the city
and its rot,
or replace
the kitchen sink
of memories
that sinks
deeper in the mud,
I find an old woman
wading through the rubble
with still the strength to smile
she says we must keep going
we can’t fall
in a heap,
but the piles
grow like palm trees
on both sides of the street
and shuffling off with her dog
both their tails
close behind
I remind myself
this is not a fire sale
this is what was lost
in the flood.

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Scrittura
Scrittura

Published in Scrittura

Home to writers & readers of provocative Prose & Poetry.

Vic Spandrio
Vic Spandrio

Written by Vic Spandrio

Writer based in New South Wales, Australia.

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