paradise farm
don’t piss on my leg
and tell me it’s raining
the for sale by auction sign says paradise farm
but i know this is the yard
of the house i grew up in
i’m an adult tourist
in my fen-poor childhood
where the past crunches
beneath me like old cowpats
my fairy-tale twin calls to me
says she want her tamworths back
she needs their piggy melodies
to fill her double atcost barn
trust her to stick her snout in
she emerges from a chicken run
clawed and strawy
like a shat-on kinswoman of hens
calls me ducky
i tell her to go shave her alpacas
and the fen wind pants
round the concrete floor
and out the doorway
where it worries the asbestos tiles
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough is the author of Glass (Saboteur Best Pamphlet Award), Sightings (Michael Schmidt Award), At or Below Sea Level (PBS Recommendation) and The Cold Store. Her poems appear in Poem, The Forward Book of Poetry 2018, The Rialto, Mslexia, Wasafiri, Magma, The Cannon’s Mouth and Stand among others. Elisabeth is editor of the Fenland Poetry Journal. @FenlandJ www.elisabethsennittclough.co.uk @LizSennitt