Pigeons

‘I hate fucking pigeons,’
the girl outside Euston station said to her friend
as they scattered fries
and pigeon wings.

I had just been to a conference,
on ‘Linguistic Context
and Interpretation’
which got me thinking about what it was
she hated so much.
Was it the pigeons? Or the act of congress,
beak and feather?

Why do you do it then, I thought, and asked her;
‘Why do you do it then?’

She looked at her friend,
fry-handed,
and then at me.

‘What did you say?’

And so I told her, again.

‘Fuck off,’ she said, and walked away,
muttering.

‘Weirdo!’ her friend shouted back,
while I stared at the pigeons

and the fries
and the dirt.

Matt Gambrill

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