New Poem by Jason Monios

A CHESS BOARD EXPERIENCES BAD WEATHER

On the labour strikes against foreign workers in the UK, February 2009.

Rain drives down, a perfect tilt diagonal,

forty-five degrees. Snow heaves itself

across, a spirit-level’s eerie grasp

of fluids and forces on the horizontal.

Rain and snow in simulcast, refusing to mix

until impact shatters their self-belief, the illusion

of selfhood, the repressed bigotry latent beneath

histrionic claims of nationality.

Outside Sellafield the rain and snow still fall

separately. Workers strike, refuse the right

of other men to work along with them.

A working man will stop another working,

throw his pottery chip into the urn

alongside his countrymen, any and all countrymen

as though he has more in common with his boss

who is English, than with his colleagues who aren’t.

How many pawns bedeck a standard chess board

and how many kings? How many pawns are tricked

into laying themselves down, numbly creating

paths with their coats for queens to walk upon?

Fight your war, shoot each other in the streets,

strike against each other, never blaming

your superiors, your generals, your bishops, rooks and kings.

Blame those who reveal your self-defeating

fratricides, not caring whose hands are on the strings.

Jason Monios lives in Edinburgh. His poetry has appeared in Acumen, Magma, Poetry Scotland, New Writing Scotland, Horizon, nthposition, Umbrella and The Guardian.

Comments

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