(Photo © Ness Sadri)
By Alan Morrison
A sticker on the sign to a private entranceway
Inarticulately states in four white squares
That grid the crudely felt-tipped red cross
Of St. George (England’s Palestinian patron saint):
POLISH GOOD
WELCOME GOOD
PEOPLE
Because they also have a red and white flag?
Because they’re also Christian and white?
Flag fascists aren’t bothered about the Polish,
Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians
(Less so those tawnier Albanians & Romanians)—
It’s not all immigrants they wish to deport,
Only the Black & brown ones, & the turbaned,
Especially those that are Muslims—
It was okay as far as they’re concerned
To have once colonised & occupied their lands
Under our Empire on which the sun never set
When three-quarters of the map was Imperial pink,
But it’s not okay for the once-colonised to come
& colonise us with their corner shops or try
To reach the fortified motherland in small boats—
& when the rain smudges those red marker-penned
Words of exception on those England flag stickers
They’ll blot to that map’s Imperial pink again.
