A welcome return for a Celebrating Change regular, Rob Walton, with a short and atmospheric poem that grabbed our guest editor Clive Birnie‘s attention. Clive says “there is so much unsaid here – and last night I slept in a house where you go downstairs to the bedroom!”
Shift
I’ve been frying this cheap mince for six days
but I can’t get rid of the fat.
It’s doing the knock-off frying pan hokey-cokey,
proud of the way it spat at me.
You go downstairs to the bedrooms here.
I met a bloke who’d never pissed in the lifts.
In the living room I suspect the others
have scratched themselves
on that stolen sofa.
Rob Walton is a writer, performer and teacher from Scunthorpe. He now lives with his family on Tyneside. Poems, short stories and flash fictions for children and adults have appeared in various anthologies and magazines.
In 1982 he was unemployed and moved to the Pepys Estate in Deptford. He stayed for five and a half months before going back to Scunthorpe. He sometimes tweets @anicelad.
Celebrating Change 