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.

Author’s Note

Sources

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