Two new poems by Dan Wyke – and read on for details of his new collection…

 
Saturday Night in St. Ives
 
The snack van is closing –
a steel sheet padlocked over the hatch,
hot oil fed down the drain.
 
The owner sweeps up kebab shavings
like scraps of leather, tissues like carnations.
 
Clubbers stumble past, joined like teams
in a three-legged race.
 
A young woman presses her bare breasts
against the window of a taxi.
 
Two men in shirt-sleeves confront
each other with blank faces, bright eyes.
 
A police dog strains on its leash, clawing air.
 
An old man leans out above a shop
and is met by a roar of abuse.
 
Someone runs and drop-kicks the grill
protecting a display of sun-bleached postcards
and jars of powdered sweets –
unchanged for decades.
 
Beneath the statue in Market Square
a couple are almost having sex.
 
Above them towers Cromwell,
taking inhuman strides, Bible underarm.
 
He lived here for three years,
refining his model of a new society.
 
The sun rises on blood-splashed cobbles.
The flat water-meadows. The wide, vague skies.
 
 

 
 
The Pier
 
Families stand at the end; a grey vacancy.
The wind blows them closer,
fearing they might be blown apart.
 
Pointing at starlings, they say to their children:
like leaves; a scarf; a genie; or nothing.
A gull’s cry sharpens against the flinty sky.
 
A gold-toothed attendant watches the kids.
The slot-machines make it impossible
to hear each other, should someone speak.
 
We group round a game, fists full of change,
watching coins slalom and fall flat,
then walk the plank to the top-heavy ledge
 
where they hang, supported by their own weight.
If a dislodged penny pings in the tray, you’re lucky.
To push your luck would set alarm bells ringing.
 


* Dan Wyke is a winner of a Gregory Award for poetry and a collection Waiting for the Sky to Fall is available now from Waterloo Press at www.waterloopresshove.co.uk It should also be available from Amazon in the next few months.