Poetry

Pony Heads

Clop clop - like ponies to a show go the girls.

High-heeled and mini-skirted

Knees dirtied from falling: Once at the seventh stair at the station

                                                Once by the ATM due to the ‘guys’

That distract her olive in martini-glass floating eyes.

Stomp! Stomp! Charge the studs

To steamy the clubs; full up with sweat

And sweetmeat in neat squares bulging through fishnets.

The bait caught already, like a hook itself, by the eye.

Watch her dancing like a live fish on a plate,

She can’t see straight, abandoned by her mates,

And now, her jaw moving like mackerel drowning in air,

She has flavoured her tongue with his.

And pulled, like she wanted to,

Under him in bestial sighs and sighs.

Or for human relief, they lie.

And so dull eyes close on the morning’s bruised purple sky

And strewn like bodies are the conquerors

And the worn concubines.

                                                  Pony heads hang heavy in beds

                                                                                                                Like a rhyme.

Harry Jelley