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The Railway Children
Scavs, scranners, nourished on nettle stems, tree sap
and windscreen fluid. Slygrogging on the embankments,
defacing the timetable at Stalybridge station, they find
haven in trackside pyramids of palettes or the tunnels
themselves that bombinate with the zoom of intercities
due and gone. They kip in the ditches under tweed
potato sacks and pass round a crocked paraffin lamp
to get off on the residual vapours. Conspicuous as amateur
snipers their backcombed hair frizzing up from fields
of marzipan corn; they launch raids on the slowed down
trains, harangue the guards for Demerara sugar sachets
and shortbread then smear their tribe’s signature on first
class windows with the liquid soap. Crossing the pennines
chances are you’ll see them, pegging it through the sedge
feral in keefiyahs and woad, all whoops and spittle
signalling in semaphore: We are the gross of our Father’s abandon.
Samuel Prince has had poems appear in various print and online journals including Mimesis, Under the Radar, nthposition and Umbrella. He lives in London.
qarrtsiluni 