White Lamborghini in a Disabled Parking Space
David Tait

I don’t think it’s possible, but I’ll tell you what I saw.
I saw the parking attendant pocket his pad,
calmly tuck his pen behind his ear
then slam a great red brick through its windscreen.
I saw a crowd gather as he pulled a crowbar
from the air and went to work on the wheels.

I know it sounds off the rails, but I was there.
I saw the whole thing, the roaring traffic attendant
building up a sweat, the gobsmacked crowd
filming it on phones, the street-cleaners struggling
to keep straight faces, the CCTV cameras
swivelling from the proof of the scene.

I know it was all probably a dream
but I saw the owner come back. I saw the traffic attendant
walk away whistling, I saw the crowds disperse
whilst humming a tune. I walked past a busker
who’d given it words and sang it through a shower of coins.
I can’t remember how the tune went, but he’d called it The Cost of Living.

David Tait’s first collection Self-Portrait with The Happiness (2014) was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and The Polari First Book Award. Poems have appeared in Ambit, Magma, Poetry Review and The Rialto. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2014 and was recently a Clarissa Luard Poet-in-Residence at The Wordsworth Trust. He lives in Nanjing, China and has a second collection, The AQI, forthcoming in 2018.

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