Poetry by Lincoln Jaques

      Ed Suominen CC





Late Shift

We lied about our ages,
not that they cared; we
were cheap labour, 
short-changing
us on the hour.

In the old days it was called Fisherman’s
Wharf. It served up crayfish and squid
cocktails in lettuce leaves to busloads of Japanese
tourists shipped in through darkened intervals.

We scrubbed dishes, pots, copper-bottomed
cauldrons that were bigger than us. We climbed
inside the clogged arteries and scraped the burnt
béarnaise sauce from our aching aortas.

The tie-dyed waitresses played pseudo-geishas 
to the Japanese businessmen who left their wives
in Fukuoka.  The turned-down lights allowed
our adolescent imaginations to film porn scenes
in the red-velvet booths while the fake Elvis
shattered love songs under the glitterballs. 
The dance floor like the den of the Marquis de Sade.

At the end of our shift we’d nick six packs
and Jim Beam hipflasks and cheap Chardonnay
and we’d hit the streets for a 5 kilometre walk home.
The air froze our sweat and stilted our desire.
We hid in doorways, avoiding the patrolling cops 
who would confiscate our booze for themselves
rough us up for the fun of it, only for our fathers
to finish us off. 

We’d throw rocks at the moon, we’d link arms
pretending that we didn’t need one another. We’d
come to the Mobil station at Verran’s Corner, the lights
spilling onto the court like an Edward Hopper painting.
The sole attendant tucked inside reading Playboys.

Then we’d start to break off like the debris from rockets
shooting into space, one by one moving out of reach, the rest
of us carrying on through the night, until it was only me,
alone, the last bit of Chardonnay in the bottle. Over the trees
came the 3am anthem of Dragon singing April Sun in Cuba.
But this was no Cuba. I’d stroll slowly down the road 
where I grew up in a house that served as a gibbet. 
As I neared my letterbox, a little drunkenly, I’d stop
and lean on the electric transformer, warm and vibrating
under my ribs, thinking whether to go inside the orange
door, to face the cold prosecutor, or keep following the road.

I still see that fork in the road; I still hesitate.






The Night Will Take You

She pushes along a shopping cart
filled with her life’s bagged possessions.
Someone said:
“Do you know those shopping carts cost
something like $650 a pop?”
A quarter teaspoon of disgust in their tone.

They even wanted to take that away.
I see her when I’m driving, on those
mornings where your feet freeze 
on the bathroom tiles and you 
think the world is against you.

All those small pathetic reasons
you give your victim self.

She wears a witch’s hat
from a joke store.
There’s a house where she always
pauses outside.
Hoping someone may look out
from her past.
Offer to wheel her $650 cart
down the pathway.

When we sleep she follows 
the railroad tracks like a dreamsong.
She keeps our demons away
they trace her to the place she once called home
where her father worked kneading
bread, her mother a seamstress.
But now it’s an apartment high-rise
with breakout rooms
a shared lounge
hot desks
cappuccino machines
a day spa
a non-stop fucking party

Where there’s no room
for a shopping cart
or a woman 
in a witch’s
hat casting
spells.

​



Lincoln Jaques is a Tāmaki makaurau (Auckland) based writer. His poetry, fiction, travel essays and book reviews have appeared in Aotearoa and internationally, including Landfall, takahē, Live Encounters, Tough, Noir Nation, Burrow, Book of Matches, The Spinoff Friday Poem, Blackmail Press, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook and Mayhem.  He was shortlisted for the 2023 inaugural I Te Kokoru At The Bay hybrid manuscript awards, and was the Runner-Up in the 2022 IWW Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. He was guest editor for the 2023 and 2024 Live Encounters Aotearoa Poets & Writers editions.