P76 Issue 9. Ali Alizadeh – ‘The Tale of Many Cities’

Consciousness mediates
between experience and action

for example: the Gold Coast
hurt in so many ways, so

I left for Melbourne and
after a while it too

started to hurt. One must define
the experience: poverty

& loneliness, a combination
that readily culminates in pain

& alcoholism. I acted
by catching the bus to the airport

again. Wuhan, China, before
the city became famous

for a very wrong reason. Emotions
were mixed: enough money

finally, to live on and
too much noise. Ankara

next, the dialectic
of militarist bondsmen and an underpaid

servant. Dubai
honestly overpaid me for the task

of babysitting overfed princelings
mistaken for uni students. Back

to Melbourne. Boronia
leafy, quiet, and too far away

from what? Clayton, Carnegie,
Caulfield, eastern suburbs

that start with the hard C. Bentleigh
begins with a normal letter, here

the café that closes too early
makes creamy, soothing chai latte.

Ali Alizadeh is a writer who lives in Melbourne. He teaches at Monash University.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents