Blowfly Grass

The houses those suburbs could afford were roofed with old savings books, and some seeped gravy at stitches in their walls; some were clipped as close as fury, some grimed and corner-bashed by love and the real estate, as it got more vacant, grew blady grass and blowfly grass, so called for the exquisite lanterns of its seed, and the land sagged subtly to a low point, it all inclined way out there to a pit with burnt-looking cheap marble edges and things and figures flew up from it like the stones in the crusher Piers had for making dusts of them for glazes: flint, pyroclase, slickensides, quartz, schist, snapping, refusing, and spitting high till the steel teeth got gritty corners on them and could grip them craw-chokingly to grind. It's their chance, a man with beerglass-cut arms told me. Those hoppers got to keep filled. A girl, edging in, bounced out cropped and wrong-coloured like a chemist's photo, crying. Who could blame her among in-depth grabs and Bali flights and phones? She was true, and got what truth gets.