Philip Hancock
The Face Shovel
When the blackboard had rolled over the maths test,
the whiff of Cookie’s perfume, her spiky heels
clicking through the high classroom that overlooked
the giant diggers on Roy & Sons, Demolition yard.
‘It never stopped then,’ Granddad had told me:
the Ruston-Bucyrus face shovel.
‘Worked the opencast, the clay pits,
Barker’s sand quarry where they go swimming.’
Strong men saunter from the dusty track
into the yard. One boots a propane cylinder,
two quickstep oxygen torpedoes.
Whop: the birth of flame, floppy yellow
becomes a fizzing jet. Lowering face guards
they’re deep-sea divers or space cadets.
Black exhaust snorts from the Caterpillar dozer
shoving the seized machine – high-pitched screeches
of Godzilla’s duel scene. Sparks rain
as its bodyshell peels away, its jib flops.
Cold as nails, her fingertips press my scalp
towards the unanswered paper. ‘Heaven knows
what you’ll learn outside the window!’
Wright Bros. Scrap Merchant’s truck bulging,
eases through the big gates, followed by the men,
figures that trudge towards the reddening sun.
the whiff of Cookie’s perfume, her spiky heels
clicking through the high classroom that overlooked
the giant diggers on Roy & Sons, Demolition yard.
‘It never stopped then,’ Granddad had told me:
the Ruston-Bucyrus face shovel.
‘Worked the opencast, the clay pits,
Barker’s sand quarry where they go swimming.’
Strong men saunter from the dusty track
into the yard. One boots a propane cylinder,
two quickstep oxygen torpedoes.
Whop: the birth of flame, floppy yellow
becomes a fizzing jet. Lowering face guards
they’re deep-sea divers or space cadets.
Black exhaust snorts from the Caterpillar dozer
shoving the seized machine – high-pitched screeches
of Godzilla’s duel scene. Sparks rain
as its bodyshell peels away, its jib flops.
Cold as nails, her fingertips press my scalp
towards the unanswered paper. ‘Heaven knows
what you’ll learn outside the window!’
Wright Bros. Scrap Merchant’s truck bulging,
eases through the big gates, followed by the men,
figures that trudge towards the reddening sun.
Page(s) 13
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