Clayo and Jo
Merit in the Nottingham Open Poetry Competition 2014
Here at the butt end of the Industrial Revolution
the old manure wharves jut out from
the opposite bank of the canal
where they've pledged their troth, just above
the spot where dry gorse surrenders to water iris,
where a Canada goose cruises a scattering
of tins and plastics netted by a torn lace curtain
which wafts and swirls like the discarded garment
of a Scouse Ophelia. Here where the leviathan block
of the last Victorian tobacco warehouse turns its turrets
toward the docks, they've brought an aerosol,
sprayed in black onto the white faces of the shields
painted on the narrow bridge. They must have plotted
it beforehand - the can tucked in her school bag
and you wonder who dared who to lean far out
over the railings to print their names the right way up,
if straggling: Clayo + Jo. Sealing the deal,
they'd have loved each other
up against a rough wall, jelly-kneed, their feet scuffing
brick rubble, where boats once loaded up
their fetid cargo to start the lazy journey north
to fertilise the farms of Lancashire. They'd have
downed vodka after from a filched half -
admired their handiwork in sight of the stinking jetty.