30th
January
2012

1327925594.txt

“The Bearhug” by Nick Laird

It’s not as if I’m intending on spending the rest of my life doing this: 

besuited, rebooted, filing to work, this poem a fishbone in my briefcase.


The scaffolding clinging St Paul’s is less urban ivy than skin, peeling off.

A singular sprinkler shaking his head spits at the newsprint of birdshit. 

It’s going unread: Gooseberry Poptarts, stale wheaten bread, Nutella and toothpaste. 

An open-armed crane offers sexual favours to aeroplanes passing above.

I hadn’t the foggiest notion. Imagine: me, munching cardboard and rubbish,

but that’s just what they meant when they said, Come in, you’re dead-beat, 

take the weight off your paws, you’re a big weary grizzly with a hook through his
 
                                                        mouth,
here, have some of this love. 

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