by Hannah Wood
Liskeard, do you know that you’re that Volvo estate farmer nursing middle age spread?
You’re the kind that practices his Mason handshake, and thinks manure is an aphrodisiac.
I see you, all dressed up in your best wool suit (the one with a special hole for the annual plastic poppy),
such a pillar of the community, helping the majoress erect the Union Jack for the headline royal visits.
I see you, parting your legs for the hopscotch girls dancing the flora dance up the Parade.
I see you, watch them get out of breath, and follow their fizzy lemonade eyes to the church where a
smooth handed vicar
“for a special treat”
lets them ring the bells and feeds them pork and apple sausages.
Liskeard, the cattle market man reusing the agenda for town council minutes,
again and again.
I know you think the Tamar Bridge is the drawbridge to your kingdom of Kernow.
I see you, strutting home on a Friday night, Homemade Cider drenched, flopping into you moorland throne.
You can’t see that behind it your daughter is having sex with her English teacher.
And you’re snoring loud fermented breaths
by the time your son comes up off ecstasy, and bites his boyfriend’s lip,
in the laughing mouth of an abandoned engine house high on the hill.