Poem
Tracey Herd
NOT JAMES DEAN
NOT JAMES DEAN
NOT JAMES DEAN
Here’s a tattered old poster on a crumbling wallAdvertising diversions of spectacular dullness; imagine
The tedium of wet afternoons, a bored teenager,
Not James Dean, hanging around the outskirts
Of a dead-end town, not even able to picture
Other afternoons. The grass is a shabby sort of green
And the skeletons of rusting machines
Have poisoned the ground. The once gaudy
Horses that circle the carousel have broken down,
Their names half-heartedly peeled: Trigger and Champion,
Silver and Blaze, hardly poetry is it? They huddle
Miserably in a cold rain, waiting out the decades
For the children who will never come; sometimes,
A car door slams, and pinch-faced boys
With remote eyes scrabble over the fence,
Blowing smoke and oblivious to the weather.
© 2006, Tracey Herd
Tracey Herd
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1968)
Tracy Herd was born in 1968 in East Kilbride. She now lives in Dundee where she works as a bookseller. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 1993, and was the recipient of two Scottish Arts Council Bursaries in 1995 and 2004. Her first collection, No Hiding Place, Bloodaxe 1996, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and her second collection, Dead Redhead (Bloodaxe 2001) w...
Poems
Poems of Tracey Herd
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NOT JAMES DEAN
Here’s a tattered old poster on a crumbling wallAdvertising diversions of spectacular dullness; imagine
The tedium of wet afternoons, a bored teenager,
Not James Dean, hanging around the outskirts
Of a dead-end town, not even able to picture
Other afternoons. The grass is a shabby sort of green
And the skeletons of rusting machines
Have poisoned the ground. The once gaudy
Horses that circle the carousel have broken down,
Their names half-heartedly peeled: Trigger and Champion,
Silver and Blaze, hardly poetry is it? They huddle
Miserably in a cold rain, waiting out the decades
For the children who will never come; sometimes,
A car door slams, and pinch-faced boys
With remote eyes scrabble over the fence,
Blowing smoke and oblivious to the weather.
NOT JAMES DEAN
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