Issue 15: March 2008

Chris McCabe | Lorraine Mariner | Kathryn Maris | Simon Smith | Siriol Troup

LORRAINE MARINER

The Fat Controller visits the commuter belt

The Fat Controller is visiting Roomes Stores
offering toddlers the chance to balance
on his pin-striped knee and a voucher
for money off Thomas the Tank Engine.

But Thomases these children have plenty of
and all over the toy department they’re sobbing
and clinging to their mothers. They will not sit
on the lap of the man who runs the 8.15

taking their parents from them; who’d eat
the ready meals off of their plates if they let him.

 

The drink

I’m saying what I really think,
it only takes a glass or two.
My tongue’s been loosened by the drink
I’m saying what I really think.
I’ve brought this evening to the brink
and sipped free of our autocue.
I’m saying what I really think,
it only takes a glass or two.

 

Postmistress

My friends laughed, when the computerised psychometric test
we took at school recommended I pursue a career
as a post office clerk, thinking of the battle-axe that sat
behind the counter of the post office we’d grown up with.
But at the post office this lunchtime there was something comforting
in the firm hand pressing ink stamp to paper; the air mail stickers
were bluer than any sky I’d ever seen and I could do worse
than find myself a sub post office to manage, where I could bestow
pensions and tax discs and at first light each morning
launch my very own fleet of postmen, the best sort of men,
the ones that know the only way to live this life is free in the afternoon.

Lorraine Mariner's pamphlet, Bye for Now, is published by The Rialto and her first collection, Furniture, is due from Picador in 2009.