No-one Wants That Stuff

No-one wants batik caftans
in a Melbourne winter.
He was going to set up
the perfect import business
to enable us all
to return often to Bali.
He returned often,
the family only twice.

He opened a little shop
on Beach Road, Beaumaris,
and put a dressmaker there.
She invented short caftans —
ugly, and not the vogue.
No-one wants to look weird.
And no-one wants to wear
resort clothes in the suburbs.

I wonder if, in Bali,
the tourists still wear sarongs,
or do the Balinese
all dress Western now?
I miss those caftans, though —
the long ones, made over there.
But no-one wants that style today;
you can’t get them anywhere.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 11
Prompt: Title the poem ‘No One Wants ...’ and fill in the blank.