Supermarket Warehouse

This is the ornate layer: in the supermarket warehouse,

boxed children’s gardens rocking on a fork-lift truck,

two rats rutting as a closed door would be punched over

and over again (we are locked out: the paddling pools

are torture saying Florida! Florida! Florida! forever).

The toys come alive to Für Elise as they do in all our

combined nightmares, daring each other, spinning on

the stray dust leaked into crates, making waves of fur.

Camping in the Supermarket Garden

Outside, the motorway is humming with the night shift

but it is not luminescent or romantic like the glow-gore

of signs in America that say M  O  T  E  L. Instead, the

burnt stubble of wildness: low-lyingspinney and shrub,

the gradual fallout from car crashes, overage tent-shares

or overage friendship. Unpacked beer for goose-pimpled

men loud with drink, their eyes wide and pale all night.

Home

They go back on Sundays to their Tamblin Avenues and

Hollyhock Gardens, blooming with the fire smell, taking

their shoes off, picking up their tiny babies, having baths.

While sitting, they flick through the catalogue. Watching,

a tight teal or sea-blue orient themed wall frieze, a waist

belt Millenium hangover; keeping it in. A cat squats and

quivers as it craps in the bushes. Now on the quiet estate

they are cooking, rest assured things will stay as they are.