You didn’t bother to wait till night;
you knew nobody would stop you,
not with all the English neighbours.
Easy to pretend the stone
the stone flew through the window by accident,
claim you couldn’t stop the dog
shitting on the doorstep
say you dropped your lighter and
what a pity the spark should happen
to catch the Polish house.
It wasn’t your fault: it can’t be
if you belong here. And how were you to know
they were still inside? You’d gone home
before the smoke-shocked faces, the arms
stripped to glistening flesh,
the child they kept on trying to wake.
..
Susan Jordan has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and writes both poetry and prose. She has had poems published in a number of print and online magazines. Her first collection, A House of Empty Rooms, will be published in 2017.
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