Steve Pottinger is a
founding member of Wolverhampton arts collective Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists. He’s an engaging and accomplished performer who
has performed the length and breadth of the country. His work regularly appears
online in CultureMatters and the Morning Star, and has won prizes or been
commended in Bread & Roses, Prole, Poetry on Loan, Plough, Guernsey
International, Arran, Verve, and Poets & Players poetry competitions. His
sixth volume of poems, ‘thirty-one
small acts of love and resistance’ published
by Ignite Books, is out now.
The
sun is shining at last, and
as
I work outside the black guy
with
half a mouth of teeth and
a
rasta belt holding up his
raggy
jeans stops to say this
is
a beautiful house, that he stood
as
a kid in the queue along the street
to
collect his mom’s prescriptions,
asks
after the old doctors, both of them,
shakes
his head when I tell him they
are
no longer with us, says the house
is
beautiful, should stay beautiful,
stands
tall in his workboots, waves
wearily
at the world, tells me they’re
erasing
our history, tearing down what
we
were, destroying our town.
I
tell him we will look after the house.
Hope that we can. On the car park
a
crow pecks greedily at a stolen egg
the
wood pigeons still haven’t realised is gone.
This
photo with friends
must
have been taken in summer.
We
are where paths meet in a park
looking
unbelievably young
–
fresh faced, taut skin, bouncing –
and
we are laughing as we take it in turns
to
push each other round in a shopping
trolley
we’ve found somewhere and
wouldn’t
dream of thinking of returning.
Here
is my first tattoo, here my anarcho-
crustie-mullet
haircut, here the pair
of
ragged combats I spent an afternoon
dyeing
black and cut to just above the knee.
Here
the flatness of my stomach, here
the
espadrilles on my feet which will forever
smell
of late lost nights and wet rope.
We
are so young, all of us, so full of hope.
None
of us have stumbled into dead-end
jobs
or dead-end relationships, none of us
have
woken to be told of a shadow on lung,
liver,
bowel, the need to telescope plans
to
the immediate, none of us are addicts yet,
and
none of us have died. The sun
is
shining. We have a shopping trolley.
I
can hear us laughing even now.
December,
outside Primark and
a
man is shouting at the world
about
Jesus, at Jesus about the world
his
prepositions are interchangeable
one
and the same
he
has the pavement
to
himself
no-one
is listening
not
Jesus
not
the women who shuffle
themselves
through town
in
hope of bargains
not
the character who thinks
he’s
Elvis – and may be –
not
the boy in a grey-tracksuit that’s seen
better
days who – just now –
will
cartwheel twice down the road
for
no good reason, stroll
nonchalantly
on
not
the emo/goth/nu-metal kids
long
coats, big boots, black lipstick
who
step round this prophet
as
he stands outside Primark
arms
outstretched
a
madman
going
eyeball to eyeball
with
the cold knife east wind
warning
of retribution, of winter
screaming
at Jesus
or
about him
it’s
kind of hard to say.
No comments :
Post a Comment
We welcome your comments related to the article and the topic being discussed. We expect the comments to be courteous, and respectful of the author and other commenters. Setu reserves the right to moderate, remove or reject comments that contain foul language, insult, hatred, personal information or indicate bad intention. The views expressed in comments reflect those of the commenter, not the official views of the Setu editorial board. рдк्рд░рдХाрд╢िрдд рд░рдЪрдиा рд╕े рд╕рдо्рдмंрдзिрдд рд╢ाрд▓ीрди рд╕рдо्рд╡ाрдж рдХा рд╕्рд╡ाрдЧрдд рд╣ै।