Stephen Watt
His habits, no different to any other man.
She knew he ate crisps on the toilet, burped, farted,
wiped his nose on her used knickers
from the wash basket. Scratched dandruff,
cracked, flaky skin over boiling eggs in the pot
and shot his load in the can when she wasn’t in
but today, different.
Tongue, as raspberry as a jubilee.
Embers of fireworks glinting
behind bleached, peroxide eyes
and his morning groan,
as long as the mule’s upright tail between his legs.
This sex was drunken, foulest, hardest,
best ever. The rain outside, typewriting on glass
like a perverted author
as she pogoed, yo-yo’d, Bucking Bronco;
was transformed into a human space-hopper.
His name, hooked on to the ragged toenail moon,
swung from the tip of her tongue
until she looked down and inside
beheld the dirty look of a bull
eyeballing her, lost in a labyrinth
of marriage,
suckling breast like infant.
The rumble of the Thursday bin collection
grumbled between them
and the indecisive streetlight
in daylight when the clocks turn back
like a reminder of a younger love
before darkness
bore Minotaurs from its stars.
***
Stephen Watt is Dumbarton FC’s poet-in-residence. Author of two collections, Spit (2012) and Optograms, Stephen became Scotland’s first crime poet at Bloody Scotland crime writing festival and is one half of the gothic spoken word/music collaboration Neon Poltergeist.