Joe Clegg 🔈

The flower stall sells shepherd’s crooks. A yappy scruff tied up outside the store, she quiets once I pass. Lord, what a sight: stilettos in the spuds aisle. Mirror-self, who you trying to be? My belt pinches. Basket swinging pizza, gin, stubbies of mixer. Handle digging in my palm. Don’t stop thinking about – me and the ex’s last fight. It was about this exact song they’re playing on the radio. The songs that remind us of the bad times, what makes them sound so sweet? Don’t stop – how the fuck did we even start arguing about this? Back of the queue, a man berates a girl for wearing a facemask. The supermarket slogan, Every Little Helps, is painted on the wall twelve feet high. Behind him, I let one glass bottle drop.

When you find a dormouse, for real, in your teapot, and childhood is forgotten. In this mirror-world safe house, where horseflies batter mildewed panes, where voltage wires tether the last industrial mile. Exile from a town of exiles. All this crap about bread and butter! We fry insects here. The Queen of Hearts on the transceiver rallies the troops, her pep talk interspersed with head-chop sounds. Dispatches from the palace, where the calendar’s five years old, its days scrabbled with “now” or “never.” Jesus, that’s a tail, isn’t it?! A fucking tail sticking out the spout. These islands are a pressure kettle, staked out coast to coast by tinfoil hatters; you’re her royal bodyguard, with grunged up equipment, patrolling the close perimeter. Fourteen hours of flashing hail-wind, barely space to lock knees, and that never ending transceiver whirr. In the hayloft, an empty toadstool throne hides a nest of worm-eaters.