Poetry

The Party
after a line by Ken Babstock

He fell in an incinerator and was let out by drunks
who slurred his body back and forth all night,
tugging at the head they’d taken for a cork,
touching his whisky-coloured eyes, those
fingernails like flakes of ice. He fell,
the first cut blooming down his forearm
and the bearded ringleader lapped at it,
declared the wine was excellent
and so they drank him, one
by one, until he slumped,
then knelt,  then lay flat
on the concrete floor
with veins like straws
and thought it might
be better after all
to burn.

Helen Mort