‘BATMAN AND BATWOMAN ROB THE POUNDSTRETCHER STORE!’
We could set up a graffiti school,
get commissions from gangs, let students practice
in the basement car park before allocating billboards, churches, banks.
We could start up a skunk farm.
There are enough empty flats in this block.
Police dogs would get doped up finding their way round here.
Let’s set up a personal shopping service.
There’re hands round here that could swipe
earrings, watches, hairpieces, without the owners knowing.
We could take Christmas and birthday orders,
anything from guitars to cars, coffins to boffins
to help in exams and deliver them like pizzas without any extra charge.
For God’s sake! Let’s do something
before we lose our noses snorting this cheap junk.
Let’s dress up as Batman and Batwoman and rob the Poundstretcher store!
FATIMA ADDRESSES HER GEOGRAPHY TEACHER
I know the terrain of my world, Sir:
whose turf not to surf:
the alleys and abandoned shops
where you can hire a gun
by the hour, the tower blocks
to have someone air-dropped
from a roof: the pawnbrokers,
the moneylenders’ stops,
the traders who deal with those
on the run and who’ll traffic anyone
to work in sex and slave-shops.
Prisons rot with our lot.
The geography of my world,
Sir, is landlocked. The roads
to yours have invisible roadblocks.
A MARGHERITA AND A GRAM, PLEASE
After nine months of trekking from Syria
to France and then strapping himself
to the chassis of a lorry, Assam is thankful
to end up living in a garage in London.
His English is improving as he chats
and jokes at a pizza parlour front with fellow drivers.
He shares his bike with another driver,
receives commission and a bonus
for delivering priority runs to regulars
who order special extras of which he remains unaware.
This is truly a wonderful country,
he tells his mum each day on the phone.
There are no curfews. There is always electricity
and the shelves are full.
I will bring you here and take you
to the House of Democracy in Westminster.
Assam drives into an unknown area.
Parks his bike outside a tower block.
He emerges from the flats and thinks about Shaza,
his girlfriend. The aromatic one, he calls her.
He will greet her with her favourite pizza
when she finishes her hospital shift.
A blade flashes. Assam falls to the pavement.
Owen Gallagher