Statement

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.