Cole Street Salvage

Of yesterday evening,
bathing my boy but thinking of our Brett
drowning that afternoon.
Don’t ask me what I’m thinking
when I’m quiet like this.
When you’re self-employed
you don’t really have a job to lose,
you just watch the work dry up
and play chicken with the bills
until the hope has dried up too.
But it’s not so bad here at the scrap yard
smashing up dead cars like they’re toys.
My mate Lee hooked me up with the job.
Yesterday Lee told me I get the next
phone or watch or whatever they find
in one of the cars that wind up here.
I know it’s his turn really,
that he’s just trying to help me out.
It’s not just cars here either,
last week Spencer went home
with a £1500 SMEG fridge freezer
with hardly a mark on it.
And just this morning I had a big
old rusty anchor on the magnet.
I set it aside gently like a wounded bird.
When Gary asked why, I said I dunno,
I know it’s just junk like everything else.
I guess the lads I used to work with
knew me well enough not to ask,
that or they just didn’t give a shit.
Of Brett down there rusting,
wondering if they took him to be the
anchor that holds the seas to the earth.
Don’t ask me what I’m thinking
when I’m quiet like this.

By Alex Moyenne

Biography:

I’m a British poet and window fitter from Liverpool, now living and working in London. I’ve recently taken to signing the bottom right-hand corner of every window I fit, so now I can claim the entire world as my work.