2011
The streets are quiet
4pm boarded up
Sainsbury’s shutting early,
windows panned in
the Argos, the bank, the bookies
In Peckham they have come in made a Peace Wall
post-it notes for positive messages, all
I heart Peckham
No more riots
though in amongst the I love reads one –
We should make it a weekly event
On East Street market
everybody is talking about it
no post-it notes but one guy
just ahead of me saying
the problem is
the police are like a disease.
2012
She was working at the Olympics
feeding the athletes
said her foot is sometimes
like it’s burning now
and her knee is in pain
sometimes she said we were stood in the fridge
like one big fridge the size of this flat
for sometimes 3, 4 hours
and then straight out in front of the hotplates again
and nowhere to ever sit down
and they only gave us half an hour for lunch
and sometimes when we got to the canteen
which was a 10 minute walk away
there wasn’t anything left for us to eat.
Lisa Fannen