Savage

hood up as rain knits the gutter purling
the pavement where I pause by the bus stop

pull keys from pockets of a worn out school day
sprint the alley steps two at a time touch

the chipped railing twice (so no-one dies)
& that man is there again under bunched up clouds

across from my front door shirt untucked fly down
looking at me with his scrawny eyes but I’m not scared

wipe my wet bangs grip my backpack like Piggy
in that book we’re reading in Mr Walker’s class

boys on an island hunting & killing the usual thing
if I was in charge I’d lock all the men in that abandoned house

at the end of the lane haunted with dimly lit dares
& Friday kissing I’d make them clean their rooms

get the washing in there’d be no smoking
or spitting & they’d always ask first

string em up & slit em dry, smash their glasses, make em cry
break their bones, jam their fly, I hope they die

eyes down to avoid the pale worm crawling from his pants
I falter at the curb double back fast

across the neighbor’s yard squat among brambles
who says I can’t outwit shadows till supper?

line up my scented erasers (so no-one dies)
I put the fat pink one in my mouth strawberry

tastes like skin in wet grass sharpen myself pencil ready
I know fear sits on the back steps & death is a quiet house
with the lights on

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Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet and arts educator. Her poems have been published in Solstice Magazine, Smoke Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Pedestal Magazine, The Maine Review, On the Seawall, Into the Void, and other journals. She was anthologized in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, and was a semifinalist for the 2021 Red Wheelbarrow Prize. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Leeds, and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.