the crowd’s roar,

and it was sport, not war,

his charmed foot on the ball …

but then his heel, his heel, his heel …

The Shirt

Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar

and asked him what went wrong. It’s the shirt,

he said. When I pull it on it hangs on my back

like a shroud, or a poisoned jerkin from Grimm

seeping its curse onto my skin, the worst tattoo.

I shower and shave before I shrug on the shirt,

smell like a dream; but the shirt sours my scent

with the sweat and stink of fear. It’s got my number.

I poured him another shot. Speak on, my son. He did.

I’ve wanted to sport the shirt since I was a kid,

but now when I do it makes me sick, weak, paranoid.

All night above the team hotel, the moon is the ball

in a penalty kick. Tens of thousands of fierce stars

are booing me. A screech owl is the referee.

The wind’s a crowd, forty years long, bawling a filthy song

about my Wag. It’s the bloody shirt! He started to blub

like a big girl’s blouse and I felt a fleeting pity.

Don’t cry, I said, at the end of the day you’ll be stiff

in a shirt of solid gold, shining for City.

Oxfam

A silvery, pale-blue satin tie, freshwater in sunlight, 50p.

Charlotte Rhead, hand-painted oval bowl, circa 1930, perfect

for apples, pears, oranges a child’s hand takes without

a second thought, £80. Rows of boots marking time, £4.

Shoes like history lessons, £1.99. That jug, 30p, to fill with milk.

That mirror, £5, to look yourself in the eye. A commemoration

plate, 23 July 1986, marriage of HRH Prince Andrew

to Miss Sarah Ferguson, £2.99, size of a landmine.

Rare 1st ed. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, signed

by the author – like magic, a new school – £9000. Pen, 10p.

Pair of spectacles (longsight) £3. P/b Fieldnotes from a Catastrophe:

Report on Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert (hindsight) 40p.

Jade earrings and necklace, somewhere a mother, £20, brand new

gentleman’s suit, somewhere a brother, £30. All Fairtrade.

The Female Husband

Having been, in my youth, a pirate

with cutlass and parrot, a gobful of bad words

yelled at the salty air to curse a cur to the end

of a plank; having jumped ship

in a moonstruck port,

opened an evil bar – a silver coin for a full flask,

a gold coin for don’t ask – and boozed and bragged

with losers and hags for a year; having disappeared,

a new lingo’s herby zest on my tongue,

to head South on a mule, where a bandit man

took gringo me to the heart of his gang; having robbed

the bank, the coach, the train, the saloon, outdrawn

the sheriff, the deputy sheriff, the deputy’s deputy, caught

the knife of an enemy chief in my teeth; having crept away

from the camp fire, clipped upstream for a night