Fussball girl

Every Saturday afternoon
She invades the gastro pub downtown
Where the fussball table waits
Beneath the barbaric roars of cocky men.

Here, she dishes out humiliation in sachets
Across its savaged plastic casing.
Hands pneumatic; medusa hair wild;
Her chin sharpens the wipe-clean air
Till it fills with the taste of sweat and flame.

Below her deep set eyes
Hot ball crashes through frozen men
Blue faces spin desperately
Over
Over
And over again
Before finally jamming hard in defeat.
All that is left is a collection of helpless
open-top burials

It is a butchering
Every Saturday.
Pints rattle fearfully on their plinths
Until hordes of defeated rugby boys
Stand silently defeated
Sticking statuesque to the sides of her table;
Licking their pints like old wounds
Till it is time for her to march on home.

I saw her again the other day
And it bothered me.
Hands nervous; her hair limp,
She stuttered into my local shop.
Bought tinned sweetcorn
Then leant rigid on the wall outside
devouring it hungrily.

She looked cold
And it may have just been poetic angst
But something in me saw a tilt to her face
A metal rod through her midriff
And a face that was neither smiling nor frowning.