I just might lead you outside
and make you look at how the sky
is like a Nina Simone song
and if you see how the moon
has smoked the clouds away
and left only music
you might want to listen
with me, for the rest of the night,
to the great and unholy
when we find ourselves
together, I glow
like the moon
sometimes, it seems
so perfect – a soft light
like the moon
our shapes wax
and do not wane
like the moon
but then I reach out
and can touch only air.
I wonder about the eclipse
of you and I, and turn pale
like the moon
I was seven when
the neighbour’s cat caught a pigeon
and dragged its twittering, tattered trunk
through our kitchen.
The cat and her mouth,
now clean and empty, seemed innocent,
but the errant trail of crumpled feathers
gave it up.
We hid it from mam,
stayed up in shifts, fostered and fed it sugar
water from a spoon, playing each other’s
game of nurse.
I remember the thrill
waiting for the magical renewal we were
led to expect: a resurgence promised that
would never come.
It fell still then,
its beak soaked, sticky with sugar, as its
drowned and silent body lay between us,
ruined and scrap.
Sometimes I wake from
shadowed dreams to see the smothered thing
in its throes, and I do not sleep. We were not
what you think.
I don’t feel bad about how
the world might be ending –
and I don’t feel guilty,
if that’s what you’re getting at.
I’m more concerned about how
I can feel myself bending –
a little like this, at first
and also, somehow, like that.
Alex watched a large brown fly circle the sticky perimeter of his glass, and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. The heat was stifling, and his focus had long since shifted from his parents’ conversation to the distant, silver spatter of the municipal fountain on the far side of the smouldering plaza. He imagined himself beneath its aquamarine deluge – feeling the cool water sweep into his armpits, and slick down, across the backs of his knees. He fancied he could smell the scent of chlorine and pennies from where he was sat, but the fantasy soon fell apart in the heat of the airless day.
He turned his attention back to his parents. His father was three minutes into one of his recapitulated monologues on how the game had all changed since the 1970s, and how Alex’s generation couldn’t possibly hope to recreate such a prodigious era. From the bits and pieces that he had tuned into, Alex knew that his father had already covered the problems with digital refereeing, and obscene player pay packets – “It just beggars belief, son.” – and would soon circle back to good old-fashioned love of the game.
Continue reading “Only Dickheads Ride Vespas”
The night before, it was supposed to be Lucy’s turn to close up the shop, but she’d had to nip off early because the baby had the croup, and Tim had a work thing to go to. I’d offered to do it for her, because I actually quite liked the silence; the soundlessness of the shop floor as order is once again restored. Like a big jigsaw. In a way, I thought it would do well to prepare me for the following morning. Something practical, to take my mind off things.
At closing time, Arthritic Maggie had said Rather you than me, petal, and asked if I had plans for the weekend. How’s your fella, the one from Hull? She’d asked, and I’d told her he’d gone back home for a while because things around here were too depressing. So, he went back to Hull, of all places? She’d laughed. I laughed too. Why not, I thought.
ataraxicat 