Red Rag
Robert Maslen

I have a quiet reverence
for wild plastic sheeting.
I take it as a gift
of nature
born of a gale's munificence.

Look how they roil among the clouds –
shed-patch, triple-jumper, tramp-blanket, hawk –

and then comes luck, with her silver
grappling hook, snags the sail,
and flightless in the Babylon branches
of their exile they dwell,

captives in shabby jumpsuits
shaking the bars,
mimicking the spots of colour
that flood my corneas
when I stand and make my way
to the kettle.

But not you,
a square yard of scarlet,
a profile labouring
on the high girders of laburnum,
chained at ankle and wrist.
Lithe and riven and snapping-to
you hurl your limbs at the barrow,
get nowhere, slacken off,
then do it again – for you
servitude is not the same as surrender.

You sink into the night, still shoving,
while burger boxes scurry down the terrace
with their stories of recovery. Sirens
howl through the ill-fitting windows.

At dawn my throat thickens
when I see you're still there,
unfurling your banner,
insolent as an iris,
bloodied but back in the rhythm,
one voice with your sister the wind.

Robert Maslen is from Bradford. He's a linguist and researcher with a particular interest in metaphor. Previously he taught English in the UK and Mexico. His poems and stories have appeared in The Frogmore Papers, Flash, Krax, the Bridport Prize anthology and elsewhere.

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