Argyle Street 1983
The stone setts ripped from Argyle Street
Were dumped by the council for free
As a heap of odd angles in our drive
On a day when heat stared you in the face.
Clumps of tar – hard as the carapaces
Of cockroaches – sweated and oozed at the edges
Their soft beneaths asking to be scraped off
With a finger and lodge for ever under a nail.
I climbed up on corners, stiff sandals sticking
Air shimmered, a breeze flounced my dress
Clearing the last fadings of smells
Packed down between cracks by wheels and feet
And now dislodged: lathered bits and leather
Salt, cattle, whisky, roker, sole, strong
Soap, coal-dust, slops, stale beer – spit
The passed-beneath-the-tarmac, fixed in black
But with its surface rippling white, like the river.
*Olivia McCannon was born on Merseyside and is based in Harlesden, London and Belleville, Paris. Her poetry collection Exactly My Own Length (Carcanet/Oxford Poets) and her translation of Balzac's Old Man Goriot (Penguin Classics) are published this year (2011).
