Sarah French: The Long Drop

No more kind friends swinging on the legs & waiting
for death to resonate, for the throat to be stuffed full of shadows & that mad
singing breath to cease, this way there's a snap, then a clean transition
not even an echo of sound, men with clipped squares of nail
think in brickn'tile, there's a cold curve of a beer they'll have this afternoon
& the soft mattress of a wife they'll sink into tonight.

This beam was rocked by the sea in that rough cradle of empire
dragged up the salt white beach, deaf to the procession of flesh
shuffling in metal, the lightning strike of leather finding skin
(the way a divining rod knows water) this beam a dead weight & innocent
has held its own against lesser weights for centuries, each death inscribed
like a notch on a bedpost, a photo opportunity that knocks without an answer.