Anne Grimes
Killing Time
On the steps of the mart in the town’s main square
girls of thirteen, fourteen
giggle in groups, wait to be seen,
flick and toss their mermaid hair,
flaunt their saunter, prink and pause,
catwalk past in the latest gear,
cut-off tops the thing this year
on midriffs frail as drinking straws
while boys with nothing else to do,
eyes empty as ignorance,
drive round the one way system
all afternoon
on a tread-wheel, purposeless
as riders on a wall of death
with the blank expression of the workless.
Cabined by life they pass and pass.
Traffic lights loom through diesel air.
Arthritic sigh from an artic’s brakes.
At the thump, thump of a megawatt bass
a girl near the kerb may fold to a car.
Over the estuary there’s a flare of sunset.
The passenger outlines her lips with a slash,
scarlet on white. The gash
is shocking, like a slick of blood on concrete.
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