It’s Night Time But The Sky Was Black Anyway

by Paul Tristram / December 4th, 2016

She sits under her rain-heavy shawl,
in amongst the cardboard boxes
outside the back of the Co-op.
Next to the padlocked and bolted
metal skip which keeps all of the
‘out of date’ food safe from the
desperately poor people’s clutches.
Until it can be safely lorried away
to the landfill site by the old wharf
where the potbellied rats and seagulls
get to feast upon it at their own leisure.
She’s counting the copper two pence’s,
one pence’s, half pence’s and a single
silver five pence over and over again
in her fingerless gloved, grubby hands.
But try as she might, there is just no
making a round twenty five pence
out of twenty three and a half pence.
A measly one and a half pence short
for the cheapest bag of steaming chips,
that’s the sad mathematics of her plight,
to swap a belly full of emptiness for one
of warm salt and vinegared potatoes.
Wearily she rises and sets off hungrily
for the fourth time this foul Winter’s
evening to check the rejected coin slots
of this town’s phone boxes, just in case.

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since.  His novel ‘Crazy Like Emotion’ is available to purchase right here . Also his collection of shorter fiction Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves' is available to purchase at https://bookgoodies.com/a/B0DFMTSR4F Both books are published by Close To The Bone Publishing. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

This article was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2016 at 8:04am and is filed under Poetry.