Small-Screen Romance
for P.C.
Saturday nights we’d talk dirty, your words
dingy, double-edged, every third one
standing in for sex and fury – come the fuck in,
you Oxbridge twat, you will fucking
see me again – feeding each other expletives
that burst on the tongue like strawberries;
after work I’d find you a gray slump
of T-shirt and boxers and smoke, strangling
our wounded Dyson while you swear (in the voice
for begging and I’m crazy about you) I can’t
make the sodding hoover work;
afternoons you’d be my age again: suit
sweetly outdated, face hapless, rabbity,
lips wild down my leg, about to lie.
* Kelly Kanayama grew up in Honolulu and lives in Norwich. She is a writer, editor, English tutor and occasional dance teacher.
