Statement
Leaving the Little Chef I say I like the look of Lancashire
and with my fist make like a JCB in a bag of pickled onion monster munch.
After Exit 17 I sleep and dream of our bones battling
like clattering milk bottles in the back of battery vans.
When I wake we sleep on a swollen floor,
our backs, ham knuckle hat racks, fat spoked with shrapnel.
Pin creaking on my castor neck
I see my boyfriends eyes are empty light.
There are cogs in the mind of the machine man,
the circular saw sends out shouts
which like a string of beads, I bind around both wrists
and grit hold as the car folds open like a paper marigold.
I hear him say ‘lets lift her out of here, she has pallid pupils’
and he sounds so hopeful I try to help by singing a song
about a girl who wears her body cast like a wedding dress
who sits in screened rooms, giving statements like a siren.
