We’re delighted to welcome Claire Booker back to the blog, this time with a piece selected by our second guest editor Jess Green. Jess says “I love subtlety of this poem (right down to its structure on the page) which presents a familiar image of the person with the advertising board. We’ve all seen those people and wondered how they manage to do that all day, how do they not keel over from boredom? The poem examines these thoughts in a powerful way and its simplicity gives the last line an even greater punch.”
Board Man
School tipping-out time: wild shrieks,
bodies heave and break, buggies scythe
through like dodgems. Outside the 99p
Shop, a human being positions himself
against the railings. His limbs are wood.
His hands are rivets. Beard full. Anorak
copious over dhoti. Placard pinioned in
his solar plexus so the weight of the big
idea won’t put his back out: BILL’S
DINER ALL YOU CAN EAT WINGS
ON SUNDAYS. Human loophole
in the bye-laws, your eyes are hazardous
to our indifference. Perhaps you
are dreaming of kite-flying. Suicidal.
Praying. Performing a C-section in your
head. Or perhaps you are calculating
the inflationary price of freedom.
Claire Booker is a poet and playwright who lives in Brighton. Her debut pamphlet Later There Will Be Postcards is out with Green Bottle Press. Her poetry has appeared widely, including in Ambit, Magma, The Morning Star, Poetry News, Prole and Under the Radar. She blogs at www.bookerplays.co.uk
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