Parliament, Fallen
After Park Hill Flats, Sheffield

We can afford to know nothing
beyond its concrete, the concatenate
glower of windows.
The street below is a shortcut
for us, though we hate being dripped on
by clothes horse balconies.

Looking up means a view
through a dark kaleidoscope,
where leaden basslines beat
at the air inside with all the thunder of hives.
It calls to mind the shuttered
instability of hearts.

As a disused mall this polygon
could be acceptable. Instead
we wonder if there are people
in the hidden parts of the panopticon,
waiting to reveal just how brittle they’ve become.

We find a helter-skelter skeleton
bleach-stripped by the sun,
the sweet vomit smell of bleach itself,
and we consider
whether something built purely to function
can only fall to ruin,

the city’s sirens congregating
in these quads,
where anyone talking talks boldly
in a voice that spreads to fill the space
shaped to keep its own
community of echoes.

Katherine Horrex has been published in the Times Literary Supplement, Mslexia and the Frogmore Papers.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter.
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