GENTRIFICATION

GENTRIFICATION-small

 

I

Now a febrile din of monorails and driverless cars.

Flying through rectilinear streets to

a middle class community, proudly ‘on the front line’.

Evenings of canals and red wine.

Famous writers, consumptives, serial killers.

Insomnia my opening.

I walk past their conservatories, aware of brooding discomfort – defensive in their redoubts.

Post-it notes to arrange affairs – sexual and career.

Organisational diagrams of coital and management arrangements.

A man in red trousers attempting talk with a soaking fisherman.

The ageing raincoat mutters: “Cunt; cunt; cunt.”

“We discovered you
people eating mud.

Photos of corners,
toddlers on coal gas,
dances with negroes.

Running rails between
boarded-up churches and
tottering walls.”

.
II.

A warm evening
and kids playing.

School’s long
finished, the

pastels matching
low-slanted sun.

An Elizabethan era
for the serial killer.

Most work in stores
and are helpful (when

not killing of course).
Take Zodiac. He is so

good for DIY, codes.
If English, he’d have

a shed. He’s their Jack
the Ripper; California

cleanness, not East End
squalor. Those boys had

it made, in their age –
“they fitted it perfect.”

 

.
Paul Sutton
illustration Nick Victor

 

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