To Love Thy Neighbour
So still, the street. The single patrol car
stationary, the team from the hospital
standing beyond the trees, the neighbours
behind their curtains. And the doctor
one foot on the step, frozen.
You’ll let them take me away, he’d said,
pulling the window shut, his voice
burrowing into her mind like a weasel,
digging out memories of a previous occasion,
hunting her conscience down.
Her eye fell on rubbish that was spilling out
from the cluttered porch to the patch of garden:
bottles and cans, wrappers – and something
that was surely the remains of a chicken. Softly,
I promise I won’t, she said.
John Looker‘s work has been selected by print journals including Magma and Artemis (USA), online journals such as Poetry Breakfast and two anthologies. The Human Hive (Bennison Books, 2015) was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection.