The Portrait of the Surrey Man, Retired to Madrid
Renouncing the Pimms, the sarcasm, the BBC and cockney, he moves now like an old fighting bull:
clumsy, with a swollen belly begging for the tending of a mother long since buried in a Sevenoaks church.
He chirps at passing girls like a dirty pigeon, scouring for leftovers,
the spoon of his hands sifting though a leather wallet for change for una mas cervesa.
His skin drips like wax over his stolen cigarettes.
El hombre ingelsia is too cheap to buy his own packs. He’s willed to age the opposite of his dad and so he has: with no embarrassment, childless. He’ll scorch till ash under the sun and that will be that.
Sarah Fletcher is a British-America poet currently studying English Literature at Durham University. She received The Christopher Tower Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2013 (placing first, and then second) and 2012 was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year. She has been published in The London Magazine, The Cadaverine, and other magazines, read at Royal Festival Hall and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, and had her work displayed at the Olympic Park and The Poetry Café. She’s most recently written a pamphlet on the topic of religion, yet to be released.