HIGHLY COMMENDED IN THE PHILIP PYKE MEMORIAL PRIZE 2025
according to the NHS, there is no universally agreed definition of an adverse childhood
experience (ACE).
according to The National Literacy trust, roughly 1 in 10 of us have very poor literacy skills
and according to the leader of the council, last night they confirmed plans to build a new library
in our town centre.
This morning I’m on the 8.30 bus snarling at the casino where it should have been
The bus driver tells me Six men have voluntarily stopped
their own hearts from beating in the two hours she’s been on shift,
and the seventh built a casino instead
the building spells out help in the sky with bruise-purple smoke
scaffolded inside a Newton’s Cradle of money oscillating
between fine dining and £3.99 hot-wings & fries balancing balls-bearing
a weight of an apple waiting for a tree to grow over the shadow of the
seventh man so that he can climb it
but trees don’t grow through concrete
so instead the casino gambles birds out of the sky
The seventh man comes shaken not stirred
unless you could be shaken and stirred
then slotted neatly inside a machine of
government statistics where suitably soft-faced
councillors let counsellors let children
breathe in bartendered molecules as
drunkened stomachs upturn in jest
The seventh man’s uncles are not alcoholics
they just enjoy the taste.
He didn’t learn to grow up in PSHE
he learnt it taking disadvantage of
parental care ironing their whiskeyed tongues
and boiling their beer-teeth white again
ringing out ale-ing throats for drops of in-security into low-spirited eczematic hands
laundering skin hungover isotonic lines / hoping you’ll be dry
for parent’s evening tomorrow night
The Seventh Man’s english teacher offers
a glass of water, says “I know why you’re upset”
“just play your cards right.”
but he doesn’t know of a book titled ‘ace’
see, given a deck of cards he’d know to pull an ‘ace’
because, given a childhood, he always pulled the ACE.
