The flat bleak eastern european plains of Lincolnshire
near The Romany Museum at Cowbit (pronounced ‘Cubbitt’)
hosting The Big Top.
I am talking with the clown in a dirty high-viz vest
about artistic integrity,narrative,selling England by the pound.
It is not the time.
Lights have to be fixed
and the ringmaster in his palaced and articulated abode
is wondering if the Romanian high-wire act
(they’ve come a long way since the Carpathians)
will plank the mud over by the ticket-office,in time.
Sylvie,the contortionist,recently wrenched from her mother
is explaining her three cracked vertebrae.
I suggest her blocks might be
bronze and silver and gold.
She says they are already
black and white.
Peter Handley
Peter Handley was born in a small village next to what was Sherwood Forest in the first decade at the beginning of the end of the age of Aquarius. He has been variously described as an arty farty twat and an Indian Oscar award winning actor and writer. He is published in numerous literary journals, trained, amongst other places, at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and continues to tell stories and bullshit in all the right hostelries to promote positive growth all around the world and in his back garden. His first solo exhibition of works on paper is due out in a fancy gallery in Vienna late 2014.
