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New Poem by Sam Buchan-Watts


Worship Services

If I draw out London like a cross
the Old Kent Road would stretch
the length of Christ’s sick body.

Catching the 453
like a potential virus,
I’m a slow shot up his spine.

But the bus stops
with deliberate ache of reason.
The perpetrator has called it

and drags my eyes to an ungodly paradox
-church shop and ASDA side by side-
where He stands (dispersed in glossy paperbacks)
author of all; beaten by showcards.

Through this valediction of faith
thanks be to yellowed window, I witness
the plastic gore of 4-way adaptors.

Next door: Grisham tops some trial,
life as I want to see it, loud and taut.
Warm green colour schemes

balance Mum with Dad,
my potential kids well fed,
not realising, that they themselves

are a kind of food.
I think of my mother, ten
years back. Weekend day mistook-

she got the wrong kind of mass-
Attending Tescos for my
weekly refill, of re-healing.

poem by Sam Buchan-Watts.  He recently graduated from Goldsmiths College and co-runs Clinic Presents which publishes a biannual anthology of the best new contemporary poetry art and photography, and through which are put on gigs and exhibitions of the best new poets/bands/artists in anything from an abandoned strip-club in Mayfair to a private school in Berkshire.

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