Patrick Davidson Roberts

Peter

As the professional lays you out, with your skull off the edge of the bed,
you cut off your airway rather than face the glass there translating the scene.
At eleven the walk out of town had beckoned, to shrug off the heat of the streets,
and maybe the coast in an hour, once out, but then you bumped into that guy.
He was catching a drink in the usual place; past the station, before the arena,
and didn’t you fancy one? It was your turn. You followed and fell in behind,
back to bad habits and company that you had always known to be over your head.
Two drinks in, the professional caught you stretching, and gestured to follow them up.
Laid out, you knew things had gone the wrong way, but without the words to right them.
They left you crossly; the headache hatching, the payment finally made,
while down in the bar, as they ask where he went — having just twigged the guy’s face —
he asks himself Where am I off to? as you had, though his is no end of escape.
As you drift into pain and to night, the airway gives up and you dream
that you’re back on the road, but this time alone; stopping for no man, for nothing.

Thomas

On the edge of Madras and about to hand yourself over at last
you scatter the leaflets behind you, and check that you haven’t heard from him.
Nothing. Plenty from the rest, though. Some days it’s nothing but news.
Each picked up their story, ran with it.
The night is curdling, with the quayside shouting and lit
which beckons you down to the fleshpot closest to the sea.
The fish char on the coals by the bar, but you haven’t touched fish in years.
Half a carafe of the darkest red carries you out to the street.
Business is done carefully between those wandering eyes
and more than a single man starts to suggest. Which makes you think of
If you can only believe me like this as you moved inside, wrapped yourself
in the warmth of his hold. Perhaps, at the end of it all, one last touch could do.
‘…my god,’ are the final words that the medic hears
holding your hand as you bleed out, the crowd being told to move back.

Patrick Davidson Roberts was born in 1987 and grew up in Sunderland and Durham. He was editor of The Next Review magazine 2013-2017, co-founded Offord Road Books press in 2017 and reviews for The Poetry School and The High Window. In 2019 he ran All My Teachers, the all-women reading series.  He lives and works in London. His debut collection is The Mains (Vanguard Editions, 2018) and a pamphlet, ‘The Trick’, will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023.