Recognising Homo Erectus
In the British Museum with skeletons
you can’t get away from
the memory of the family
that all live in one room.
Bunk beds and camp beds and
the illness of a father
that gets into the fibres of everything
like the smell of fried mackerel.
He will get up and go to work
and come back and lay there
like bared electric flex,
unsafe in the dark.
Eyes open looking at nothing.
His children might inherit this
or mature too quick in order to deal with it
but the story is
before anyone can help
something has happened
and a new family is crowding into the small room.
Graham Clifford was born in Portsmouth, grew up in Wiltshire and lives in Walthamstow with his partner and two daughters. He has been published widely, internationally and nationally, in such magazines and the Rialto and Magma. He is a Head Teacher. www.grahamclifford.co.uk