Kenny Knight
Absolution Café
At the village café the young assistant
Serves customers in relays of four.
The menu doesn’t express the cook's
Love of poetry. Egg and chips appear
Again and again like a bad villanelle.
The rainwalker enquires about his shopping bag
Forgotten after a long lunch of beer.
There’s a design on the side
Of one of his supermarket heroes.
The one that made Andy Warhol famous.
The young assistant bites the pink capsule
Of her tongue. Breath a cocktail
Of dead nerves. Sausage. Bacon. Lard.
The rainwalker's senses overdose on grease
As the young assistant passes his shopping bag
Across the counter an alcoholic
Flash fog hangs over the day.
Beside him at the counter a queue of naked
Russian soldier country sons of Stravinsky
Display swan suntans of an English summer
Is this the real uniform of war
Cruel mistress who takes men
Away from the arms of women.
The soldiers are thinking about liberation
Vodka Doctor Zhivago Moscow Dynamo Papaver.
At a table next to the window a woman
With a camera is considering angles
And calling for more light
Down at the village cafe
The cook reads Yevtushenko.
Page(s) 140
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