Costermongers

Flapping, like one of those cardboard cutouts
you find at stores, my body braves the wind,
slips awkwardly among the crowd, the shouts
of barrow boys, the trestles of fake skin.
A two-dimensional alien, I
rack up my resignation, to cuttles
and silver skulls, a bull-hard belt of sky,
to scrap and dross and bootleg bottles.
A shade that cannot grow paler, a slice
of human pain, I take my fate off her hands.
She tells me this is our lot, our petty vice,
but our finials are diamonds
and magic could make them ours. She smokes, blown
along from maiden to mother to crone.