Slightly Foxed

I found Meg, passing a quiet half hour
in the second-hand bookshop
while the women sang carols for the farmers
market. There were lots of people
but no sales. Seagulls appeared
passably natural in pothole puddles
where I sat to read Campbell’s poetry
next to children banging drums. A boy’s boss
offered to pay him twenty dollars for getting up
at seven, working till noon. His mum talked
her up to thirty, ‘If you want him back.’
‘I haven’t sold a thing,’ the stall keeper said.
‘Neither has he,’ the mum parried.

Rachel J Fenton

Rachel J Fenton’s poetry has been published in Landfall, English, The Rialto, Magma, and widely anthologised, and her chapbook Beerstorming with Charlotte Brontë in New York is published by Ethel Zine and Micro Press.