(after ‘We Real Cool’ by Gwendolyn Brooks)
Summer passes, autumn arrives, days cool
as the racoons scoot skedaddle, rattle the cans
in the school yard, lurk late at night and we
watch them with furtive eyes. Urban bandits
nesting in sewers, striking straight for our
leftovers, human garbage, we envy their
devious ways, their dextrous hands. We yearn
to don dark eye masks, abandon our families
and with our jazzy raccoon gang, we’ll
saunter off to the bar, sink long glasses of gin
while arguing, knock out a song for a sinner
or two, hustle pool with drunken bums until
insults hurl a twister. Fists and cues a blur,
hauled out by the scruff of our necks, kicked
out into the bleak, dank air, scraps of detritus.
Deep in their dens, opportunistic raccoons
enter torpor.
Suzy Aspell (she/her) lives and works in Luton, Beds. Suzy wrote, produced and directed two plays for the Civic Centre in Tainan, Taiwan, on British pantomime theme. Suzy is working on a pamphlet of global statues exploring themes of feminine cultural and historical tradition. Twitter: @susisu371