Out of Town B&Q
It resolves the ordinary carnage
of a Sunday morning, the nail
snagged into raw pine,
the seep of a shower pipe
into a ceiling cavity, the stain
pouring across the dream
of a lounge like terrible news.
Or the minutiae of a garden:
bean canes, chicken wire, slug pellets,
sacks of tomato compost
hefted like cadavers across aisles
of bitumen and astro turf.
Along the rows of paint cans,
the couples speak out shades
of green– emerald, woodland,
Dublin, Calke– and my father
as a young man appears, sawdust
curled into his jumper, a pencil
behind one ear: imagining a home
amongst aggregate and beech.
Daniel Bennett was born in Shropshire and lives in London. His poem, ‘Clickbait’, was commended in the 2020 National Poetry Competition and his work has been published in a variety of places, including: Wild Court, Stand, The Manchester Review, Structo, The Stinging Fly, Under The Radar, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear Publications, 2017). His first collection, West South North, North South East, was published in 2019 by The High Window Press.
Black Nore Review 