Dear B,

There’s a street party somewhere
on my body: kids are crying
and chasing their icecream
down the gutters with the rain.

Russians are running
hooligans at the French
and English. Liberated.

Rain still knocks at doors
and windows but we’re determined
not to let it in without proof
of good intentions and a trade.

Outside the food bank a lad
celebrates the Queen’s 90th
by taking a coffin in a wheelbarrow
down the buntinged high street.

Admiration,

A.

*******

Dear C,
The street party referendum voters
would have us abandon our Ardenne
Pate and Parma Ham of unknown
import and export.
Chap called with a wheelbarrow.
He wanted to know whether
we were into buying his Mam’s
manure fresh out of her coffin.
Don’t walk under A’s legs else
you’ll get bad luck. She insulted me yesterday, said I were big up top
and down below. I defended mesen,

saying I were buxom and bubbly.
She called me a bitch, I called her an arse.
We laughed. Kept backbone of English natty.
Blessings.

B.

*******

(C to D)

Hi D,

bit of crisis last night, water
pissing through bathroom ceiling.
Put towels down and got blacked
up tracing roof leak in loft.

Called plumber who advised turning
water off. Still dripping through.
Summer is leaking all over,
and clearing its tubes.

His mam were in a shitheap coffin
while I knocked nails into his wobbly
wheelbarrow, rustbucket. Coffin
were floating like a boat.

A still moaning about B.

Consolations,

C.

*******

(D to E)

Dear D,

This should really reach you
before you go abroad
to be a pantomime terrorist.
I’m sneezing, a lot.

Must be the dust in the air
from your winged stilettos.

Walking round our new Polish
deli is like going abroad. You
don’t get a word of what’s what
and have to read the pictures,

like they did in churches
in the olden days or ask
a guide, a shop assistant
as to what stuff is. Our F

would know because he’s
been learned right, has languages
and all those hard words
in his head. I ask him,

don’t reckon on understanding
his answer like, have to take
it home and cogitate over it.
I get it eventually.

Dearest to you,

D.

P.S. Don’t get wet.

TO BE CONTINUED