Revivifying Bees in the PRU*
(*Pupil Referral Unit)
A tennis racquet leaves a waffle imprint on the forehead of the boys that get too close. The Jackson 5 at full blast at 08:45 bounces off the Georgian townhouses that surround the PRU. This Island Earth from the 50s was on at teatime last night; benign alien super intelligences ultimately couldn’t think their way out of spectacular galactic doom.
Marcus sees everything. He is alive like sparrows, their pinhead hearts beating too quick to count, every leaf twitching is threat. He makes an origami knife with so much masking tape it is nearly hard enough. He bites his forearm and wants to be Iron Man. How does he know so much about guns?
He climbs the unclimbable three-metre-high perimeter fence and pisses on the sports coach.
Instead of lunch, we extract a still bee from a dusty web. Its surprisingly moist proboscis uncurls into a spoonful of sugar water and in the end it takes off but it’s a drone and there are more spiders in this square mile than all the humans in the world.
Graham Clifford is published by Seren, Against the Grain and his recent fifth collection by the Black Light Engine Room. He is a Head in Tower Hamlets, London. You can find him at his website here.