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Andrew W. Pye

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Coincidences

I leant out of the window to have a smoke
when a raindrop struck the paper
and left an oval of transparency
- the tobacco in small twists beneath.

I recalled Stimpson jnr
proferring a white plastic bag of maggots
- held head-high, firmly by the neck -
that he’d just bought from the bait shop.
Feel that! he said, so I put my hand
underneath and felt the wriggling fawn mass
- it was as if there was no bag there.
I recoiled and he laughed.

A vet once told me of an albino dog
- sweating and slavering -
which had a belly distended to its knees:
the flesh white and taut as a billowing ceiling
after a burst pipe; diaphanous, too,
with a thousand brown worms,
anorexic eels, snaking around themselves.
He broke all the rules
- no attending nurse; not a word to the owner -
with a lethal injection to the jugular …

 

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