stooped in the hustle of LondonM
Bridge Station the outcast sog
of Kingston Jamaica sells her grimed
page-leafers (glossy, abundantly gossiped)
to the weary willing
to pass her by.
The creasy shine face makes startling the dry
rough hand reluctantly taken though absently
offered. Surprise
in the dryness expecting the
slip of sweat.
Fear of what she says and will say:
body beneath
the ramshackle clothes. She laughs
like toothmarks in a flesh-wrapped bone and spits
cunts at the look-ahead travellers.
Drying
At seven o'clock the morning
begins its quiet attempt to nourish
our parched affection.
The birds are set singing in Brooklyn,
flying on wispy wings.
I can't help but search the reds
of your eyes while a lemon
sits drying, dark
and mapped with black and shrunken pores,
the still air flecked with rind.
A dog cries, its mouth full of footsteps
on the bottleglass as the shards
fall from your eyes.
I say
I can't beg you to be kind.
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