Vroom Vroom Plays in the Background by Madison Godfrey
Behind the wheel, I press the ball of my bare foot against the worn ridges of the accelerator. The road opens into a series of soft curves without speed signs. Each bend feels as though it was drawn by someone practising the letter s in cursive.
I grin at paddocks of cows, imagine the taste of grass. Picture cartoon cowboys with frayed yellow wheat held between their teeth. Consider the weight of multiple stomachs and the rooms inside my own torso. Make neighing sounds when I pass horses. Think about giving birth in a paddock, picture pink plastic dishwashing gloves shoved inside of me.
I wonder what the human equivalent of udders is. Remember lactating friends and their rhythmic pumps – sitting beside them in parked cars outside the party. It was my responsibility to find a decent radio station while they untied and retied a series of ribbons: those expensive maternity blouses that promise modesty for someone else.
Some bodies are resources while some bodies are redactions. I imagine teats censored like nipples; pixellated online; itchy beneath strips of electrical tape at the pride parade. Behind the wheel, I imagine a series of small red tassels hanging from the underbelly of a cow.
Vroom Vroom Plays in the Background is an excerpt from a verse novel I am writing, in which a fictional narrative is told through a sequence of poetic fragments that feel like a fever dream. Ultimately, the book is about love and the lonely rooms that rage backs us into.
As someone who first encountered poetic language through post-hardcore and punk music, I aim to create poems that embody the momentum of those lyrics I yelled at 16. In this piece, that energetic intensity is curated through flickering imagery and brief glimpses of fictive memory. Mimicking the way that fields flash past as you drive fast on a country road, the persona’s unruly thoughts tumble out in quick succession. By drawing from the qualities of a cinematic montage or a refrain yelled in a mosh pit, I wanted this scene to immerse the reader in an accelerated intensity that propels them forwards, as though they’re positioned in the passenger seat.
Despite the fictional plot and persona of the verse novel, moments from my own life have snuck into the work. I often approach poetry as a site of observation and reckoning, where the writing process constitutes an act of inquiry. Rather than writing about what is already certain, as though describing the light at the end of the tunnel, my creativity is fuelled by curiosity. From within the tunnel, I am writing towards the possibility of light.
Here, I am reckoning with rage and redaction. I am thinking about electrical tape peeling away on sweaty dancefloors; about legislated flesh; about conversations held in parked cars outside roller derby training. I am thinking about anger’s curriculum; about how some people’s anger is accepted as an inevitability, while others are taught to internalise it; I am thinking about the way rage stays inside the body after it has been swallowed repeatedly; I am thinking about driving fast on an empty road, with speakers threatening to burst.
Australian Poetry Month runs throughout August and includes festivals, events, workshops, and a commissioned poem of the day brought to you by Red Room Poetry. Find out more here
