(after John McCullough)
I wake to a Godzilla shriek. It’s 3 a.m.. Metal legs
are clanking at the bedroom window. My Louise Bourgeois
spider has left her home in Balgrayhill
and found me again.
Her skeleton drips water and rust,
giant slug trails gleam around her under lamplight,
the curled guts of her Grand Staircase groan
in sepia of summer evening concerts.
While children played endlessly on clipped lawns,
she gave birth to rosebuds, white eggs of tulips
closely tended by municipal gardeners
who let us sit on warm winter benches.
I tell her, I’m sorry, but I live in Paisley now, our council house
was bought by an aspirational family who have warned
their children about the presence of drugs and alcohol
in Springburn Park.
If you’d been more West less North, your streets
might still be respectable, but now
only Kerry’s Kutz and the Turkish Barber
can keep lives neat, not the councillors
-stalk their dreams instead! She shrugs
- iron ribs creak as confetti of dandelions and goutweed
fills the gutters of Glasgow Road bungalows.
She leaves, trailing a cloud of pipistrelles.
Morag Smith
Morag Smith’s poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Scotsman and Gutter. She was commended in the Ginkgo ecopoetry prize in 2021 and shortlisted for the Bridport prize in 2022. Her first pamphlet, Background Noises, was published by Red Squirrel press in November 2022.