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James McGonigal & Hamish Whyte
from VIRTUAL MEMORIES

Pensioners posing for their snaps
on the Rothesay ferry: an outing
long before that word got gay and proud.
Women in herringbone coats buttoned up
to their knitted sou'westers, like mermaids
in glasses or barnacled goddesses staring
out from the prow into what's left
of the teeth of life's gale.

went in the Grosvenor Cafe
thirty years after
being a student
the building had changed
the toasted cheese roll
tasted exactly the same

The surgeon came round
after my hernia operation
it's butchery, he said, with a cheery
smile, just butchery.

Waking up these summer mornings
I feel that my home is a holiday house
whose furniture I haven't bought but use
whose food is foreign to me utterly
whose green light through tall windows
it will break my heart to leave.

.
that image
of Danton's friend
in Wajda's film
reading reading reading
through the trial
in prison
in the tumbril
never lifting his eyes
from the book
while the other world raged


I dont know how
so many of us got round the kitchen table
at the one time. I guess the older boys stood
and reached in over the wee ones' heads.
There was a confusion of cups and dishes
and a hand to mouth existence. In restaurants I'm still liable
to eat off other people's plates.
Just watch your glass.

Coleridge's opium dream of Asra.
My half drunken dream of Asda.
The ghastly trolley draws me to strange aisles,
a grey bearded Ancient Marinader

Tom Leonard
walks across Lamlash green
wearing a white plastic carrier bag
as a sun hat
his face red and running with sweat:
A one wonders how much hotter
his head can become.