managing between the barricades.
My kids play between sniper targets.
I fetch the shop through broken
buildings perforated by gunshot,
past cars jammed across streets.
I’m just about managing between regimes.
Paul Brookes was in poetry performance group “Rats for Love” and is in their “Rats for Love: The Book” Bristol Broadsides, 1989. His first chapbook “The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley” by Dearne Community Arts, 1993. He has read his work on BBC Radio Bristol and had a creative writing workshop for sixth formers broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live. Recently published in Ekphrastic Review, Red Fez, The Bees Are Dead, The Beatnik Cowboy, Clear Poetry, and others.