Category: Poetry

Variations on a Faded Swastika Tattoo by Scott Cumming

1.

Followed his friends
wherever they went
That’s how he found himself
in the barn that first night
Seig Heils and venom
Impassioned and celebratory
His awe and fear
Why he was chosen first
Branded like cattle
in what was supposed
to feel like belonging
Belief sown into skin

City Triptych by HLR


1.

Thursday night in the city / 10pm-ish I think / I’m busy / doing nothing / watching / the girl in green as she trips down the escalator & cuts her knee / it bleeds a little & her friends scream. Apparently / once lost / sanity is hard to find; seeing is believing & I am blind [drunk]. I can’t remember exactly where I lost my mind but I might well have lost it here / Kings Cross no apostrophe / where the streets are mean & the people are mean(er) & I myself have nowhere to be & no one to see (I was meant to party with a drag queen but he’s pulled a sickie) & I must stop praying to a God who doesn’t believe in me & yes, the Eurostar is tempting—Montmartre in the morning—drunken dreaming? clearly: I don’t have the fucking money for properly escaping. And look at the men on a stag-do whistling / grinning / leering. Misery hates company but danger becomes me. Where I end up this evening remains to be seen but for now / for right now / it’s just me, Chablis & Sarrazin (Patti gave me Albertine for free) & the grime of city life trapped between my grinding teeth.