May/Oral

by Jo Colley

Put on a hi-viz jacket, and you could be anyone,
here in sprawling Teesside hinterlands: aspirational,
Houchened, overlooked, with only ourselves
to think about, now everything is halfway to hell.
We plough on through housing estates, bramble
cuffed, Roseberry Topping lurking under fog.
There’s always football: up the Boro, the red
and white of England, lived differently here.
Men refuse to cede their territory, even though

it’s obvious the women are wise to them. Pride
is all anyone has: in work, season ticket, new Juke,
or a region forged in steel, now rusting in a layby
off the A66. Hope heritaged, anachronistic as
an honest politician, curious and under glass.
Knock down one sacred monument, and others
will surely grow in its place. Time accelerates,
carbon swirls, waiting to be captured in
a zero sum net. We’re doomed, no doubt: in this,

we have the advantage, having sold our birthright
for a pound a share, as we prepare to celebrate
two hundred years of exploitation. From steam
to cyberspace, all the profits sliding south.
These days, it’s the locals who rob us blind, no more
outsourcing to offshore, hiding in plain sight.
We show our arses to the biggest crooks, en route
to the food bank, breed enthusiastically
way beyond our personal allowance.