TO MARKET, TO MARKET TO BUY A FAT PIG
after Marie Howe
by Abigail Ottley
The people Jesus loves are shopping today between the top of Causeway Head and Market Jew Street. Outside the London Inn, some are staggering and sprawling. They’ve been looking for Jesus within. But it’s not yet noon so most move on, past Lloyds Bank and the Oxfam shop, towards Tesco Express, Poundland, and the Co-op; past the ghost of Humphry Davy, on his newly scrubbed plinth and the house where he dreamed of Salvation: Humphry Davy, of modest birth, poet, chemist, inventor; Humphry Davy, who was also the light of the world and likewise had the power to save.
But the people Jesus loves don’t care about the past because that, after all, is just history. They don’t give a fig about the wise and foolish virgins and whether they trimmed their wicks or not. The people Jesus loves can’t afford to care because the Co-op has cut back on staffing and they’re caught in a queue that refuses to move, soaked through by the rain that’s still falling, even though it’s May and the gulls are nesting and the visitors are wearing their new shorts.
The people Jesus loves are stuck fast in a rut, exhausted by the effort of survival. They do what they must to make shrinking ends meet and take their pleasure where they find it on the run. They’re spurred on by the spectre of those miserable few who the world leaves to camp in shop doorways; whose dull eyes fester with wordless entreaty; who have nothing to sell, nothing to buy.
‘I WORRY SO MUCH I CAN’T SLEEP’
(lines written after a comment on social media)
By Abigail Ottley
No sleep and little comfort when the night-watchers come, those restless, most uncivil of servants. Sly as stoats in their white winter coats, they are the meddling infiltrators of her rest. Impassive as totems, they monitor her breath, ejecting her from Dreamland in an instant. With what malign purpose and grim intent, their footsteps echo through her gloomy oubliette as they the record her restless anguish with a brisk, neat tick and wind her white linen like a shroud. There is not much to hope for in a world so mad it’s content to count coin above compassion. The thought of it crushes her, presses her down, keeps her good-enough heart from its rest. Such bloodshed lies and hollow, tinkling greed. Every day brings a new graven image. What’s to be done? What blame attaches if now and then she turns her face away?
No blame, perhaps, but still her sleep is small as her mornings are red-eyed and stinging. Palestine, Africa, Yemen, Ukraine. So much suffering. It claws at her peace.
**************
Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction. Her collection Out of Eden, which focuses on the life experience of working-class women, is due out with Yaffles Nest in May.
