Rye Lane

Hair which bring out the individual

I always read first, turning onto 

this high street I’ve walked so many times – 

which some weeks 

was the highlight of my week,

my eeked-out pittance of life -

past the puddles where pigeons ruffle

feathers to uneven rooftiles; 

decommissioned shopping trolleys

leashed to shops with scraps of string.

Pink nets hang on hooks

as if lamb carcasses.

Sumac, Puff Puff, Reeboks,

wet boxes stacked like ruins.

Get your rolls of vinyl

patterned with photos of salad

or like floors in Roman villas;

whiskered hellmouths of smoked catfish;

negronis; Paw Patrol balloons;

diamante swans.

There’s a record shop called Peckham Soul.

Still a face-mask, here and there,

a tarnished 2 METRES sticker on the floor.

Still that window full of sawn-off 

ladies’ heads and shoulders,

left as if by their magicians – 

wigs slipping above red smiles.

Seasonal lattes in the Costa,

school uniforms and onesies,

plastic bowls that translate okra 

or mangos to pound coins.

In the bakery with sour-blue livery

I’ve bought the latticed slices 

that bask beneath heat-lamps;

iced buns that sit like death-masks 

in their fluted ruffs;

I’ve passed CASHINO by the chapel

thinking: Dust to dust, 

purchases to ashes.

Sometimes riches 

from each corner of the world

can feel so meagre.

Who is stitching? Who’s not eating? 

In the supermarket, paper bags 

are priced-up by the entrance

ready for the foodbank trolley:

tinned soup, sanitary towels.

What waits in the dim corridors 

of struggling shopping centres? 

Vapes and sim cards. 

Cracked sepia marble tiles

dry by increments beneath

the yellow warning-bollards.

Still, LED rainbows 

flash in cheerful nail-bar windows. 

Outside the Wetherspoons

a man in tracksuit and a neck-brace

smokes a cigarette.

I hope that drag’s exactly what he needs.

I hope it makes his soul 

tug lightly up.

Clare Pollard