© David Keyworth

Reading The Great Gatsby at McDonalds

I stir ice in my diet coke,
imagine the straw is a cigarette holder,
I’m at a Long Island party
the mood music is Contralto jazz,
French fries come in finger bowls,
a white-flannelled waiter tops up our cocktails.
I read tautly honed lines
from my New York Times-recommended novella
to silky moon-eyed admirers.

Pale kids with bright bracelets,
bump my chair.
Still hungry, I get up to go.
A girl in a grey shirt sweeping
competition tear-offs asks
if I enjoyed my book, what it’s about?
I say: “A man who’s very wealthy.”
“I wish I was,” she replies.

I leave, smiling back at her,
clutching my ticket for Almost Famous.
Outside Foregate Street’s restaurant signs,
reflected in February dark,
look like the green glow
at the end of Daisy’s dock.

From The Twilight Shift (Wild Pressed Books)

© David Keyworth

Saturday Night Divers

Do you remember that time at RSVP?
It must have been summer.
Beams dancing off engravings
from when it was St Martin’s.
Trance beats too loud to speak.
We were sitting upstairs,
me facing the big screen.
They were showing bronzed bodies
diving off a precipice,
into a blue lagoon,
in never-ending rotation, it seemed.
No undercurrents, no encroaching waves
no plates shifting underwater.

Now that we live in different towns,
sometimes, drifting off, I dream
the shift manager locked up
without spotting us,
and we’re still there
beneath the chandelier,
the endless queue absent outside,
divers suspended in the atmosphere.