Miro Bilbrough
Small-time Spectre
He located his fireman’s shirt, Grandfather’s herringbone jacket,
fisherman’s hat and softly lantern jaw and while the lovers ran
backwards in their sleep, hailed a cab to practise losing himself
once more, parked on my street. And that’s where I found him,
lodged in that many-pocketed place he goes while cab drivers who
speak of Islam keep the engine running and their gazes branching.
A kerb-side Russian doll with a cap of painted hair unpacking
the roll of fifty dollar bills, the wardrobe changes, the footage
of kitchen ghosts caught like a draught between the window and
the sill: small-time spectres who never wished to be committed
to tape, managing as I hold the passenger door, to slip down the back
of the seat, back into un-being where try as he might he cannot go after.