Adele Rickerby

Robbie was here ‘84
Flick of a thin folded foreskin,
a ring of rubber peeled, turning,
curving, splaying and spraying a stream of
steaming urine to splash like flax
against the foothills of grimy snow,
stacked and compacted along the long
sides of the never ending highway to nowhere, as
‘Jesus, kid! Hurry up and get back in the fuckin’ truck!;

the pinching smell of rubber catching gravel,
flecks flying from spinning wheels,
pea-sized stones spattering
the snow like bullets from a semi,
obliterating the painstaking whorls
and curls of ‘Robbie’ etched in one long arc of piss;

it is the finest work you’ve ever done,
your reach increased, a tiddler’s cock
no longer now you are finally breaking
voice, dropping balls, spouting and sprouting 
and almost big enough to
smack back,
brothers, bullies, older boys
and all the other ball-bearing bastards that roll through,

roll over,
roll round and round,
a merry-go-round of fiddlers shaking dicks 
like magic sticks,
backs bent, groins out,
worshippers of their own erections.

Robbie was here ‘21
Dick pale and limp as a dead fish,
squeezing out with bloody piss,
gritting, grinding pain,
the vexatious cry of ‘Robert, not again!’ –
but you can’t bend down to clean the floor
through the scald of snaking pain,
although God knows you have tried
and it seems a foreign thing to you now,
a prehistoric invertebrate, all grey flesh and no backbone

and it galls to think of all the early morning stiffies,
the wild, unchecked rush of semen exploding in single beds,
on girls’ legs,
thudding into hot sand, hot sheets,
dark streets,
the dozen willing, wilful wombs
you’ve worked your wayward youth through,
not to mention two wives, three children
and one miscarriage.

You still sign the floor with piss,
but now it’s by accident.

Adele Rickerby lives and writes in Heidelberg, Germany. She is currently studying an MSt in Creative Writing at Cambridge University.