Star shaved into the fade of the lad
who holds the front door with two hands and a smile:
It’s our paintings on the walls
our pictures on the beermats
Click click clack – no studs inside!
striped and named and numbered backs
on the rugby club boys and football club girls
and football club boys and the rugby club girls
who line the wall of glassy sunlight that
warms them while they wait their turn at pool.
And young Johnny Ralfs from the City Farm
guides Nubian, pygmy and Guernsey goats
and chickens and pigs and Shetland sheep
through the bustle of prams and shaking hands
that’s just settling down for the tuning up band
along paths and through gaps cut by kids playing tag
to the front to buy strips in the raffle.
Racing on the telly today
but the room still pops in time with St Marys
when everyone’s phone at once vibrates or pings
and if you laid Milbrook Towers down
it’d be half as long as this bar and
we’d still be up here elbow to elbow:
jostling like memorabilia round the jukebox,
spying pals across the room and waving like
the carpet swirls back at the artex ceiling.

By Rhys Lawrence