Antony Nicholls
Gillette Man
Skateboard axles are rough-run over iron stair-rails. Gangs stride
in combats, loose as skirts to the ankles, shove knives, hug bats.
None outgrow their baggy dugs. In my Boots shop-front, I’m half
leant, outstare consumers, a wired witness for police after youths
stooped on mountain bikes over stairways. They tower boyish shadows
braked for the clatter blood-rush of who’s-chicken? outside Starbucks.
Fledgling hands flutter on handlebars. My own moulded fingers purr,
repeat smoothly, fashion a circle. I hope bird wings graze this mall.
Escalators whirr. Black handgrips slither. My wrist’s spun pre-ordained
over plastic chin, slows, still. Secret circuit cameras wait for dawn.
Everyone’s an actor for my lens, the swerved glass eye of Mall TV.
‘Love Esprit.’ Nude odourless bodies, illuminated in glass, face me.
Antony Nicholls lives in London and works for a well-known charitable trust. He won the Keats-Shelley Millennium Prize and has published work in Thumbscrew, Staple and Acumen.
Page(s) 82
magazine list
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