Despair by Meezan Rehman. Image Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery
MacArthur’s stick
was shaped to match
a human-spine, near-exact, though blunted
after each attack, each polite request
denied, after which the spreading grin,
the full pull-back-and-fly.
Hedley’s brother’s legs were black
the whole of spring, his mother’s eyes
sloped from her face like dinner plates
on a tilting ship. MacArthur blessed
the head of each child he passed,
with a lazy nip, with a gruesome, dark
abominable ease, with a putrid charm.
That Sunday, Mac bought port-and-lemons,
took Hedley’s mother’s arm.
He pressed the dimple on her chin,
and, like the angel in the womb, became
the whole cause of her discontent,
and of its forgetting.
-Phoebe Walker
Phoebe Walker is a Northumbrian poet now living and working in London. She has twice been a Foyle Young Poet, has attended the Tower Poetry School, been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and is a recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award for her poetry. She works as Poetry Editor at Cadaverine magazine and Reviews Editor at Lunar Poetry.
