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Writer's pictureAlexander Velky

Doubtist Books - Poetry - Tragedy branding



Tragedy branding


“Have you ever tried needles?” he asked,

Mancunian tongue, Gog saliva.

Thin and looking sorry for himself.

“Amazing,” he said, out of focus.

On his first morning in the city

He had a girl 12 years his junior

Navigating the stolen street signs

And temporary fencing in our

Kitchen to make him filter coffee,

And a job interview to go to.

She ironed his purple shirt for him.

I didn’t know we had an iron.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” he enthused

Before she was even out the door.

I shrugged. Heading out into the heat

Without deodorizing, no more

To watch old men in suits half as old

Reminisce on Chinese business trips

Or bankers barely older than me

Explain why communism failed,

I begrudged him his optimism.

I was leaving the city that week

Without all the answers I’d sought,

The brown corduroys I’d only just bought,

Or much beyond yes, no, please and beer

In a language I’d never now learn.

Had I tried needles? Need he have asked?

Nevertheless, by then friends were scarce.

So the day before my departure

We sat and drank in an Irish bar

In the Old Town to kill the morning,

Waiting for our mutual man, Mark;


Eyes fixed on the TV’s rolling news:

Bombs on trains and buses. In London.

This was before phones had internet –

Besides which, I was between phones then;

Between jobs, between meals, between homes...

No way of contacting my brother.

Would he still be alive tomorrow?

“What’ll they call this, d’you think?” he asked.

I recalled that last summer at home,

Before the degree and the divorce,

A Barbara Allen adaptation

On Radio 4 being cut across

By talk of World Trade Centres and planes

That would soon be dubbed Nine Eleven.

The War on Terror was underway

By then; everywhere I spoke, schoolkids

Would shout “George Bush!” and give a thumbs-down.

We never brainstormed a likely brand.

I left for a block of Danish cheese,

Which would be my only souvenir;

The stink of which would permeate through

My dearest possessions for a year.

He came to Prague to kick a habit,

As I had found out so many did.

I wonder what the place made of him –

And what he made of it. But that night

Mark and I kicked a Gambrinus can

All the way from Hlavní Nádraží

Through hot drunken streets of cheering Czechs

To our door and upstairs to our flat.

If I’m really honest with myself,

I’ve wondered more what became of that.

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