Never Lost Control
I saw one on the street once, not made up,
as she came out of a small grocery store
with a plastic bag containing green tea.
She barrelled straight through me, point blank, though we
weren’t a hundred yards from the usual place.
Another I saw strolling the King’s Road
between the barracks and Chelsea Town Hall,
in a fur coat long after they were hip,
a crimson layer on her bowed top lip
and a boundless stare at the heart of things.
Nick Cooke has had around fifty poems published, in a range of print outlets, as well as the anthologies Poems For a Liminal Age and To Kingdom Come. His poem Tanis won the Wax Poetry and Art contest (April 2016).