Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

‘Outside the Turf Club, Piccadilly’: a poem by L Kiew

 
 

    Outside the Turf Club, Piccadilly

 

There’s too much moustache
wax and pastel corduroy,
an excess of vetivers, Trumper’s
Extract of Lime, scads of green
Spanish leather, flush panelling and
Old Boys clinking club glasses,
dropping cigar ash, enjoying
genteel dereliction and discussions
of pelf, mud-fresh potatoes and
that day’s running at Ascot or Epsom –

And here we jostle, eyes down,
umbrellas up, clammy, clutching
Poundland bags and rattling tins.

The wind tags graffiti, scatters
our muttered syllables; pigeons
splatter on Range Rovers.

Someone jumps
the barrier and spray-paints
THIS IS THE WAY AND LIFE

 


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