The One Percent’s more gung-ho bitchesbitch that their taxes go towardsthis holiday. None do. It’s private,mid-spring when the crops burn. Pink slips tend to appear around that date;roaches swarm, and jellyfish. Spouses leave, and the one left waits for talk-show hosts’ routines about the day.At their desks, despite stern memos,the employed for a moment contemplatewithout…
Tag: Surreal
Red Limbs
I see them coming from behind the layer of mesh glass being lead by a white coat to the table of pastels and crayons where us fuck ups scribble serenity onto a blank page. They’re not not my friends or family, it’s the emaciated late teen’s next to me, the one who’s too lost to…
Assessment Day
Sometimes I look from the classroomto the low grey building by the car park and remember I have photocopying to do so run down then run back before the class starts. Last week I got locked in the copier room. I rang security but no one answered.I could see the students gathering for the last…
But Always Meeting Ourselves
The time machine first arrived during the summer. I was outside, mowing the lawn, when it insinuated itself into the shrubbery. The time machine was a tall yellow cylinder, like a can of pop someone had stretched. I remember it smelt like the carpets at my grandmother’s house, which I had crawled across as a…
My Voyage on the Anti-Titanic
He is one hundred years full of Atlantic cold water,He twists inside currents revelations of ice,He soft kisses facefirst the bulkheads of wetrustThe slowdance of years in the blackness of space. A waterlogged astronaut face dark with eyerotHe is bones only connected by an idea of lifeHe doesn’t have ears to register first creakingsOf the…
City of Glass
One morning we woke to find the citycomposed entirely of glass, prismaticin the low sun glancing off sharp edges.Not one object remained that had not bledits colour into the ground in the night.From the deep shock-proof shells of officesto the etched headlines on delicate sheetsof stacked papers, everything was washed clear.Only the pavements, foundations and…
The Idea Groves
They rush into the chippie in the woozy rum hours after 3am, the hours of Formica and kebabs. They gather armfuls of greaseproof paper, pungent and vinegary, with small, scrabbled hands. Wee anteater hipsters, foraging. They resemble bug-eyed thyroid kids, expressions as huge as fists. Undoubtedly, their nails are dirty and feet unclean. They reek…
Second Coming
Hyde Park is mined. There’s barbed wire on The Strand. Snipers line up London Bridge and watch the Underground. Through the miracle of modern genetics Christ the Redeemer is back on Earth to save us from ourselves. From the brown curly lock, locked around the Papal neck, we managed to grow Jesus in a tube….
Rain
It is raining again. I need groceries. I have work later, but I can’t go out. I’m made of sugar. You think that’s funny? You’ve never been caught in a light drizzle and felt your face melt. I have. It’s hideous. Nose dripping into chin, eyes drooping, one twice the size of the other. Nothing…