Steel Cage
Wendy Alexander (University of Newcastle, Australia)
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There’s something about a supermarket trolley, its silver mesh, rubber wheels, each alone summing together to slide across the lino of every aisle –– up and down, down and up, turning at each end. There’s something about a supermarket trolley, the straight-across handle bar, the gold-coin slot that roots it inside the next steel cage (if locked and left, it spits a gold bullet at your back). There’s something about a supermarket trolley I want to fight: the way it drives me to pull the same packets from the same shelves as all who’ve slid before me. The way it unfolds notions, stacks cans, loads cartons to my waist; Spam, ham, lite, tight, organic at every turn; on the freezer door, a hyphen grabs my throat: ‘new gluten free-range meals …’ And all the while, a tick in my wheel spins a tape in my head: I’m just hunting and gathering on an age-old human march.
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Wendy is a postgrad in creative writing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her poetry and short stories have won awards, and she is working on a novel of journey through 1890s Australia exploring the slippery relationship between time and travel and stories told / not told.
