Extra, extra cries the Paperboy as he
Grabs and grips her lips,
Squeezing the middle like toothpaste,
Extracting 1x grimacing mouth,
A duckface pout and a Clanger’s snout.
Long and pointed for funnelling sneers,
Or exhaling vapour. A verbal caretaker
Stringing up lies from point A to point B,
That will disappoint me. Run an AB test
To see which face is best.
Which will the public adore?
Do they demand that she
Suck in her jaw, gobstopper her cheeks and push out the bones,
Calving glaciers alone under a frown,
Pointed pottery pieces emerge from the ground,
Unearth and excavate, pack your crate with
The mousey brown hair that tumbles and falls,
Stumbles, appalled at the knots that clump up its roots,
Shoots and all. Tousled’s the word, each spindly thread
A probing tentacle, a tentative proboscis
Molesting stainless steel frames,
As if playing a game second hand, so no need to unbox it.
A penitent pose, feet tight, knees bowed, hands clasped on her bag,
A sky blue summer skirt, navy blazer and creased flowery shirt,
The dowdy clothes of a vicars wife,
The masquerade of a suburban high,
Of wicker baskets on old rusty bikes
Of morse code messages tapped out on pipes.
A sneering sniff appraises the carriage,
I look at her hand,
Wrinkled, bare, no sign of marriage.