Susan Poem by Patrick O'Reilly

Class bell rings and like a shot I'm cutting for the chain link fence across the yard easily clearing it at the spot where it is only waist high.

Sue is waiting in the boxcar in the meadow, the ochre-red rickety one with the wood slats gone, orphaned there since they took away the train. It creaks and it croaks and it whistles in the highwind and Sue is sitting Indian-style shivering with a bottle of Screech she took from the old man's shed and we take short childish sips like dipping our toes into the habour on a hot summer day.

Her hair is satched, soaked in the rain and clinging to her face like too much mud or blood or makeup and she looks pretty and I tell her so. She snorts and takes another swallow of the warm, glassy rum. She coughs. I mean it, I say.

Her lips taste like rum.
She holds me a little longer than she should.
There'll be hell to pay if she goes home tonight.