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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Fiona Sinclair

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Jumble Sale

Already a small queue of gypsies,
tooled up with Asda ‘bags for life’.
Staking our place,
We are eyed like new hookers on the block.
Pick up trucks screech into the car park,
children gust through us squealing ‘Grandma’
mobbing the matriarch, whose soft dough body oozes
over a stool, her face sharp as an underworld fence.
We flatten against walls with watery smiles
as the parents sweep past like VIPs,
their starling clamour filling the tiny vestibule.
Scouring the line for members of our own tribe,
two women in wax jackets and pearls
deceive us, they are wearing past jumble spoils.
Despite tapping my neighbour’s conversation,
their intelligence about these sales remains a mystery.
Eventually I ram their chatter,
the women open up the width of a door chain,
throw two websites at me,
then show their backs again .
Will they open early? begins to ripple through the ranks,
but the doors remain jail tight.
We leer at late jumble goods whose donators drop
excuse mes like treats for dangerous dogs.
Finally the clunk of a bolt followed by cries of Move back,
as two woman struggle to open the door against a drift of bodies.
With a sudden sugar rush of cupidity,
I muscle into the hall , elbows sharpened
and lunge at the bric a brac.

Page(s) 51

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