Jack Underwood

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Song of the shared cab home

i.m. Gboyega

Such riches afford us
a hybrid arriving
shark to the reef
If you don’t talk
to the driver
you’re a psycho
and I miss you
like we hate police
in Lewisham chewing
their 2am tongues
wasting their police time
impersonating police officers
so allow us this Blackwall
this stop for a piss and
another night’s wide dialectic
who’s decent who’s hyped
who’s repeating a trick
we said what we said
but meant to be kinder
now shy on horizons
your smile a lockscreen
alighting holy as a saint’s
fixed stare This is me,
just here, you said
the slowing car
I thought I saw
a cuticle moon was it
above your shoulder
in the trapezoid outline
of a door completing
after you’d climbed
smiling through.
This is me, just here.
And that was you.

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JACK UNDERWOOD is author of Happiness (Faber, 2015), A Year in the New Life (Faber, 2021) and Not Even This (Corsair, 2021). He co-presents and curates the Faber Poetry Podcast and is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.