WINDSOR

 

With fingers spread wide a bonny boy

walks the country fair.  His hands turn out

to catch the smells, to see through palms,

to taste with the white space beneath

his little nails.  He touches everything –

the flat nosed pigs rutting in a white-washed stall,  

the draft horse muscle steam, the cow flows

of milk and piss – the animals rise to meet him,

through damp skinned pits they stumble knobby kneed.

 

 

First publication: Turk's Head Review, July 2016