Social Control
He’d lay about all day
if given the chance.
On his back, legs kicking
the air on occasion.
I raise his lead. He
lifts his head and cocks it.
Doesn’t seem to mind
me attaching the rope
to his neck and yanking
to show I’m in charge.
I take a cloth muzzle
from my pocket
and clamp his jaws shut,
this should stop him fighting.
He follows me out obediently,
until he gets a whiff
of a weed-on tree and pulls
my arm from its socket.
Jack Houston works for Hackney’s public library service. He is co-editor of Nutshell Magazine and is a member of the radical London housing cooperative Breaking Ground.