Picaroon Poetry - Issue #17 - July 2019

John Son
St Pancras
If I ever get married it’ll be here, gazing into
my husband’s eyes alongside 2 for 1 paperback
deals and cut-price egg mayo sandwiches.
My boutonniere will be a chicken wing.
It won’t match the acuity of rhubarb
or gooseberry, but people will love it for trying.
I’m back-benched, licking ciabatta dust off my
fingers. Last night you were on fire, but not
in the way that wins people Man Booker prizes -
rather, like the way people gawp at departure
boards, and drop their coins on the concourse
floor when fumbling for train tickets.
Pennies roll outwards in miniature flight paths of change.
I am scheduled to meet Mark at the shop selling
activewear for the modern impotent gentleman.
We have planned meticulously: from the greeting kiss to
our getting lost on the Tube, reuniting on the
Victoria line platform in an achingly sexy epiphany.
Weddings are much like delayed trains. Both require dancing
to an excessive degree, but rarely for good reason.
I will never marry Mark. He’ll run away to Nottinghamshire
like they all do in the end - my chew toy of a heart in one hand,
my beloved chicken wing in the other. What will become of
me then? The place settings left stale and untouched;
the elegiac concept of train termini stations, but never
the cold, hard reality of it all.
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