<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cracking British Pen<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a pig in my pen The pig shrieks its last noir drop. Run fast little pig! Between the bars of terraces Arms, legs and heads appear Piggy can\u2019t look up at the sky <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jonny Reid<\/strong>‘s poems have appeared in magazines such as Stride, Magma, Stand, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Warwick Review, PN Review, The Hat, Clinic<\/em> and Nthposition<\/em>. \u00a0He recently graduated with an MA from the University of Manchester and has just started a PhD\u00a0 on Edward Thomas at Royal Holloway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cracking British Pen There is a pig in my pen unable to crawl out, its snout protrudes, black with ink, sniffing across the paper. I think of Great Britain and its cracking citizens. The pig shrieks its last noir drop. Its squashed fat shivers. I break the pen in half, fleshy legs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3513"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nunable to crawl out,
\nits snout protrudes, black with ink,
\nsniffing across the paper.
\nI think of Great Britain
\nand its cracking citizens.<\/p>\n
\nIts squashed fat shivers.
\nI break the pen in half,
\nfleshy legs quiver from one end,
\nlittle corkscrew tail springs
\nand I ease him out
\non to the altered paper.<\/p>\n
\nHis trotters jolt him forwards;
\nfor fear of the black ink
\nhe treads only on white,
\nrunning between things I have drawn –
\npitch dark streets with little light.<\/p>\n
\nwith tiny glittering pin-point teeth
\ninto slack bored chains of detached,
\nsucking his belly through ginnels,
\nhe loses himself down cul-de-sacs.
\nI take another pen and begin
\nto draw cracking citizens.<\/p>\n
\nof a cold blue ink.
\nThey stand still in the streets,
\nthey peer from the cross-hatches
\nof grand black mansion blinds,
\ntheir faces complete blanks.<\/p>\n
\nbecause I haven\u2019t drawn it.
\nMy eyes like a pair of moons
\nshine above his doodled world.
\nI snatch the last black pen
\nand draw a house around him.
\nTonight, I watch him suffer.<\/p>\n