bookies' favourites

automaton hares
fixed forever
to the inside rail
now electrified

dashing neck to neck
over four-forty
or five-twenty
to elude the hounds

bolting from traps
timed exactly
for a pointless pursuit
of the unattainable

and mug punters
down on the night
but running again
at the bookie’s call


(A small group of us went to the dog-racing at Wentworth Park earlier tonight. There was me, Halimah Simpson, Sharon Smith, Holly Stewart and Ed Sutton. We took $50 to bet with, taken from the office 'corporate bet' fund … a collection of coins we've thrown in a jar. We left with $97. I came home then wrote bookies' favourites to remember our triumph by. I don't think we'll be going back, somehow. It's a bit of a sad place, past its sell-by date, and very sparsely populated by anxious, usually disappointed men who drink too much and throw too much away.)
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