The plumber's impressions of Europe

image: http://www.smilingyak.com/large_t_shirt_pix/hobbies_professions_t_shirts/plumbers_pipe_t_shirt.jpg

Poetry by unknown Nesblandian:

The plumber's impressions of Europe

So, what's wrong with that tap,
I ask.
Nothing ma'am, just bloody bludgers,
didn't fix it properly,
and, by the way,
what's that accent of yours?
I tell him.
I've been there, he says.
So how was it? I ask.
I wouldn't know ma'am,
just flew in, was meant to stay a week,
felt sick on the plane, they took me straight
to a hospital there, can't remember a thing,
next day they put me on a plane,
sent me back to Vienna.
So how was Vienna?
Don't know, he says - he was sick.
But I've been to London, big town, nice pubs,
met another Aussie, from Melbourne of all places,
but he was quite all right, I suppose,
good bloke, liked a pub-crawl.
I've also seen Prague, beautiful town,
then worked a bit on a farm in Israel,
got me some money
and flew to the States.
Your tap should be right now, he says,
gathers his tools, calls his dog,
and goes to his next job

from

Friendly Street Poetry Reader

A question of image

I know Dracula, believe me,
where I come from he is at home.
He turns up every night at 12 sharp
to oblige the tourists.
His long fangs do not shine in the moon rays
as bright as they used to,
you know, recession, no money
for fancy dental care products.
He spends a lot of time polishing the sign
above the entrance -
'Transilvania' it says,
but tourists still think it's misspelt,
they prefer the version with double s and y.
They wander all over the place aahing and oohing,
some take photographs, others shiver obligingly.
When they all leave, Dracula's birds make nests
out of Coke cans and fast-food wrappings.
'It's difficult to stay in business these days,'
says Dracula while refreshing his make-up.
'they've all read Bram Stoker's
book,
they've all seen the movie -
I MUST match the image.'

from

Fluorescent Voices: Friendly Street Poetry Reader

21


Dr Ioana Petrescu, Lecturer in Professional Writing, School of Communication, Information and New Media, Uni SA, teaches courses in professional writing (editing, publishing, document design etc), creative writing(poetry, short story) and communication. Her areas of expertise are: writing (all aspects), editing and publishing, literary theory and criticism, and the sociology of writing (theory and practice of the relation author-literary agent/PR-editor-publisher-bookseller-reader).
Ioana Petrescu is a Romanian-born poet, poetry editor, translator and academic whose work has been published in a variety of literary magazines nationally and internationally. She started writing poems in English when she emigrated to Australia in 1996, and since then she has had two poetry collections published - I Say… (Wakefield Press 1999) and Fumigated(Ginninderra Press 2001).