The Crack
The crack had spread like an art print of ants,
an angry line that seemed to grow each night.
It stepped from off the skirting board and danced
a zigzag sketch, as if in flight or fight.
Sam wasn’t sure exactly when, or how
it started, just that it was here now – black
on tea tone walls, with its brick crumbs to sow
on soggy rug, behind the music rack.
Sitting on two chipped wood planks stretched across
two upside down, warped plastic crates, Sam thought
back, trying hard to find the memory of
an earthquake, truck or broken bath, then lost
hold of his beer and cigarette. He caught
the can, but ash fell, burning rug hairs off.
Luigi Coppola’s poems have appeared in Anon, Equinox, Fourteen, Frogmore, Iota, Magma, Orbis, Other Poetry, Pennine Platform, Poetry Digest, The Rialto, THE SHOp and South. He has a website – www.bit.do/luigicoppola – with some of his published poetry.