Any Excuse
You won’t find him in there, says Alan Shea
as the policeman flips the freezer flap in the fridge
looking, they say, for INLA escapee Mad Dog Magee
in such an unlikely haven — the home of a Manx
gay rights campaigner with a telephone that clicks.
When told to bend over backwards, he sighs
a sigh as they deem two noses enough, just now
they comb his pubic hair like a mine-swept beach
to declare it crab-free, and one could only wonder
if they really were looking for Mad Dog Magee.
Unabashed, the police park sheese y straid and accost
every single man visiting that home on Demesne Road.
Perhaps they confessed to a PC Roberts they had shared
chips, cheese & gravy with Mad Dog, or had dug a tunnel
behind the bread bin with a shake of their left trouser leg.
sheese y straid [Manx Gaelic]: up the street
Note: 2022 marks only the 30th Anniversary of the partial legalisation of sex between men in the Isle of Man. The last two years have seen apologies by both the Manx Government for the anti-gay laws and in August 2022 the IOM Constabulary apologised for the treatment of gay men and the way they implemented laws — the latter being an unprecedented apology by any police force in the British Isles. This poem is a tribute to the activist primarily responsible for the law change, Alan Shea, and recounts his experiences with the police prior to that.
Simon Maddrell is a queer Manx man living in Brighton & Hove. Throatbone (UnCollected Press) and Queerfella (The Rialto) were published in 2020. His third pamphlet The Whole Island will be published by Valley Press, July 2023.