Does This Rag Smell Like Chloroform to You?

By Lauren Bolger

Location: Tib Street

Where the suited and booted see pigeons day to day

Roundabouts, the vultures’ playground of retail foreplay

Cast-offs of a half up half down hacienda

Dancing on stage, the dark atmospherics all coloured in

Jade and jaded the thoughts of the big-time bouncer

The drug infused frame who will have us over

To the friend who sits facing with spunk in her hair slathering verbs terms

Pulling the pronoun round Tib Street showing it parkas with detachable fur

At night something bold occurs on the blackout beat

Filled with ejaculations, cobwebs, piss and bleach

Damp, damp is my pocket and damp is the earth where I fell upon it

To a chorus of mist, to a crescendo of sex on parachutes kissed

Humming, shaken where the lighters speak sonnets

In solace my pavement where I fell upon it

Lauren Bolger, 20, is Mancunian and studies English and creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has performed this poem onstage at The Deaf Institute and it is part of a collection she has been working on in preparation for her final dissertation piece.