SMALL TOWN TALK by Martha Bird

i wandered in and around and up and down dead beat streets and watched as cleaners washed away the tackle with the tide 

Soapy suds streaming far out West to the doldrums where the trade winds converge over small towns talking in state street saloons,  

filled with numerous other sultry straight slicked back stock gunslingers 

ready for the gold rush  

cowboys outlaws and sheriffs and  

lobsters telling tall tales in tanks of mollusks  

frozen delicacies gossiping on Friday nights when A little vice takes the edge off tall tales cracked and crushed as ice scooped from the white box by the backdoor on dog day  afternoons in those small towns where swish fish make dead weight over twenty percent tips and  closing shifts 

down at the Old Navy Yard always end with  

Who wants to start?  

i wandered in and around and up and down, put a penny in the jukebox and chalked it up to last  night’s bad calls, to mis-trodden paths and the sun in his eyes on the drive back home, while the small town talk blamed it on the snooker and the scratchcards and the Springsteen on the  speakers 

on boozer’s guts and the Bay City Rollers,  

cruising now over the just raked leaves of church’s lawns, 

And what of the long forgotten phone number scrawled in a salt stained notebook lined true cool American blue on the floor of his  

old truck?

Martha Bird is a 27 year old writer, filmmaker and political activist originally from the north of England, currently based in Rome, Italy. Her work addresses themes of gender and the body; place and borders; poverty and wealth.