Ghetto Fashion
Word was out we should
Get the red stars. The yellow ones
Were going to expire.
So we spent all morning
Queuing for the new version.
I thought What if they change
Their minds again?
And in the confusion
Managed to keep the old model,
Just in case. Mind you,
It wasn’t long before
Green was all the rage.
Yellow and red went
Completely out of favour.
We queued up for them all.
Word then went round
You could buy a black star
That was looked on better
And distinctly less eye-catching.
I could only afford one of those.
Then it was announced
That the design would change
And all the old stars were
To be handed in. I was
Fed up and didn’t go.
No one, no one at all,
Came back from that queue.
The Weir
You can cross safely here,
Reasonably safely –
You could always slip,
Of course,
On the stones,
Stepping too lightly,
Too quickly or too hard.
You may not get across.
It is up to you
To assess the risk.
The other side is much
The same as over here.
You have been informed.
*Peter Eustace was born in Birmingham, England, in 1954, and has lived in Italy for 35 years. His poems have appeared several times in Equinox (including once with a water colour by Russi Dordi) , as well as The French Literary Review, Borderlines, Carillon, Trespass and Obsessed with Pipework. He has published two books of poems in English and Italian (Vistas, 2006, and Weathering, 2010) and a pamphlet (Brink, 2009) with erbacce press, Liverpool.
