Two poems - takahē

#26: Margaret

Kev and I are leaping from the roof of the Scout Hall on Totterdown Road using Thatcher as
a target. She scoots about to avoid us but on the eighth attempt I catch her in the temple with
my heel. Kev’s body goes limp. He’s confused. We’re animals, he says. I suspect he’s begun
to sympathise with her. Thatcher sees her chance. She rolls on the ground, holding her face.
She whimpers. Kev kneels and holds her head up like a baby’s searching for its feed. I tell
him she’s feigning the whole thing. It’s a charade. That she wants his money. A Darth Vader
costume is lying by the bins. He looks at it. It’s a good fit. Don’t, Kev, I say. Thatcher strokes
his cheek. It’s yours, boy, she says. Take it. Take it.

#70: Margaret

It’s 1966 and I’m in the playground of Christ Church Primary School on Baker Street. All the
boys wear itchy shorts and run their marbles through the grooves of the drain cover. It’s a
complicated game for which the rules change at every turn but we’re having a high old time. I
have named all my marbles after the players in England’s World Cup–winning squad. It
makes them precious, and all the boys want to win them from me. The wind gets up. It’s icy.
It begins to hail. For a few seconds, we are undeterred and play on. Thatcher sweeps down
the concrete path in black stilettos and long black leather overcoat. The boys part and back
away. The clicks of her heels make some of them hold their ears and cry. Come on, you
cowards, I say. Keep playing. She orders two of the biggest boys to grab my marbles and
hand them to her. Give them back, I say. She throws Martin Peters at me, my favourite player,
and he hits me in the right eye. You’re truly evil, I say, but she has a picnic hamper and
invites the boys to join her. She lays out sandwiches, cakes, dandelion and burdock. The boys
begin to scoff the goodies. A thunderclap detonates above us. Lightning strikes the outside
toilets. I tell her I understand what she’s up to, but there are fondant fancies. She holds them
out. I must have one.

Mark Russell’s collections are Come to the River (Downingfield), Men Who Repeat Themselves (erbacce), Shopping for Punks (Hesterglock), and Spearmint & Rescue (Pindrop). His poems have appeared in The Manchester Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Stand, and Shearsman.