My green face is enormous on the hill.
The night sky is assaulted
by my ridiculous nose,
a skew-whiff cap and ionized grin.
I am a jumble of lightning bottled
in the loop and swerve of glass,
Watford-lairy, off my trolley―
bumped off then resurrected, time and again.
I pound the retinas of innocent pedestrians,
spark petitions. I am too much.
Boys canoodle under my chin, uneducated
by the empty clarity of my presence.
I smile on, assist dog walkers, mystify drunks.
I am a fizz in their cytoplasm.
I am frying the dark.
I am lucky as a ninety-nine-leafed clover.
© John McCullough, from Panic Response (Penned in the Margins, 2022)
Picture 12095509, photograph on a postcard, circa 1950, image copyright Mary Evans / Pharcide
John McCullough lives in Brighton and Hove. His collection of poems with Penned in the Margins, Reckless Paper Birds, explores vulnerability and the human body. It won the 2020 Hawthornden prize for literature and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. More recently, his poem ‘Flower of Sulphur’ was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. It is part of Panic Response, his fourth collection of poems, published by Penned in the Margins in March 2022.