cnr St Georges Rd & Scotchmer

i.
Half a metre from a calf,
cycle – frightened & tanned,

flexing opine occupy politics
with a cracked bat – he seems to

know everyone in the bakery. His
argument (buttered, smoothed &

neatly we shake hands he) invites
me to the park for a game. I put

my hand into my loaf & refuse –
tuck it under my arm. Running

shoes & sourdough, a simulacrum.
I want, here, to reply. I want argument,

fey. But have tan trousers inappropriate
lunch in my hands, ears etc.

ii.

I sat next to the pig. A patron brought it in mistaking it for a meal and it stayed close to his tarpaulin. He placed it on the table every time he ordered his Sunday lunch “eating as his subject”. I could smell it like a milkshake tucked into a felt dicepouch. It was absolutely rude! I had no idea what time the last train left. I could sit for hours. The pig’s breathing was rolling everywhere hours away and I salted my chips. They were “piping” hot. He had a small tuft of tobacco coming out of his ear and his haircut, the salt and pepper whiskers placed into cigarette paper hanging from his cracked lips, wobbled as the pig nudged him. I sat next to the pig. It was afternoon. I couldn’t sleep. Billy was tuning his guitar to a few pigeons he’d been feeding in Piedimonte’s. I can’t read English in as much as I can blow hot chips and put them into my face my tongue knowing how to guide them along with punctuation. There is in my mouth a ladder (Jorie Graham). Pigs are messy as rugs or, at least, lean in metaphor/self conscious exclamation or bleached hair. I take my straw from its strawberry hide and in no time its gone as a mouse or heart murmur.