Anne Marie Corrigan
Sham Boy
My hometown is cut in two
its knife a river
a sacred stream of flotsam
whose muscular scum-lipped eddies
slash and score and whittle their way
through marshy land
swirls like musical runes
spell out thuggish poetry
from North to South
from high street to low.
Sham Boy was Northside born
of that snobbish watermark
to a moustachioed mother
on infertile ground
where twisted scody streets run
like the river runs
like he ran
through sunless alleys
littered lanes
and gallows humour
how could anything grow there?
what freshly-sprung newborn could ROAR,
blasting from open lungs, throat and heart
singing into hope?
but he tried.
Sham Boy’s father was a boxer
got punch drunk
so drunk, even the docks
had no job for him
after the ring had spat him out
closed its gates in his mashed face
his mother was schizo
his sister too
talked to the air
wallpapered their rickety house in shiny tinfoil
in case the voices told them to set it on fire.
Sitting on a milkcrate
socks soaked by dirty puddles,
Sham Boy SWORE
as he cut into a Cornflakes box
slivers of light glinting on the kitchen’s silver walls
cutting out cardboard
to replace the broken soles of his shoes
that he would never be poor again
He would do
whatever it took
to run from that river
towards fertile ground
and sunny streets
and rooms that didn’t smell of piss
to take a bounding leap and SOAR
for a change.
Sham Boy found a way
a murky path
where sludge and slurry
slurped and slapped at his ankles
he rose and rose
rose to Lord
of all the land
so sought after, so high
so “Wanted!”
he became a tabloid star
a young Micky Rourke
a Celtic Scarface.
From across a jointed rave he saw me
striding,
he cleavered his way through cheek-to-jowl crowds
Moses parting his ecstasy-soaked throng
jumping, fist-pumping, glowsticking
he grabbed my face with gurrier-rough hands
and kissed me, hard
branding me as friend, as insider
and released me
even though he had no right
to do that, to mark me so
I was not his
or anyone’s
not even my own.
He told me his dreams of running further
of soaring higher
with devil dust rimming his nostrils
and I naysayed his way
though charmed was I by
snakes that coiled ‘round each inked bicep
indigo like his eyes
I had dabbled and now withdrew
No longer longing for the gutter.
Sham boy demanded too much
from all he supplied
he flowed outwards
from the Northside
peddled with bigger, hungrier thugs
in the shadowy corners
of sunnier streets
became more sham than boy
until no cardboard could fix his broken soul.
Who can stop the cascade
once coursing water has made up its mind
to burst its banks
to go and go and go?
I wish I could have saved him
before he was found
every cut up bit of him
frozen
in a freezer
in the Cote d’Azur
where the river runs clean
and clear.
Laissez Faire
Baudelaire
Shed a layer
While swinging on
The chandelier
Voyeurs there
Could but stare
At the Frenchman’s
Derriere
For ‘tween the cheeks
Was stuck a rose
His fleur du mal
Struck a pose
How could he do that to his bum
Must’ve been the laudanum.
Anne Marie Corrigan
Anne Marie Corrigan is an Irish writer living in Vancouver, BC who is privileged to live and work on the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish Lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) people. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Alive Magazine, The Exchanger, The Thunderbird Magazine, In Dublin Magazine, and Orato. Alongside her love of poetry, Anne Marie has also completed her first book of fiction, The Cause, and is working to get it published.