A D Harper

Circle (tarot)

After the fistfight which was more of a scuffle — a circle
of kids around us chanting fight when it wasn’t, just their
expression of the longing to form a circle, like an ancient
ritual around a bonfire on those nights in the celestial calendar
which we have always marked, and maybe they would have
loved singing hymns pagan to the moon — the headmaster
said he was very disappointed, well of course he was, we were
surrounded by grey concrete, everything a sad echo of what
a school should be, and I the saddest echo, if I could go back

in time I would tell myself to steal my mother’s tarot cards,
give illicit readings at lunchtime for much-needed money,
and when my nemesis gets to the front of the queue I turn
over the card and whatever it is I tell him that it means
his better life is waiting, and I say it so softly and so mystical
that he is instantly convinced and no longer my nemesis,
and in my teenage bedroom I give readings to my future self,
decades away, who is me, now, and I say you feel at peace,
whatever the card, however many swords are gathered there.

A.D. Harper's poetry has appeared in The Manchester Review, Perverse, and Butcher's Dog, among others, as well as two previous appearances in The Interpreter's House. He lives in England and can be found online at adharper.com.