buying winkles

• a pram 


  loaded with pails of winkles
• i’d bare


  the newspaper twists bulging fat with winkles proudly home
• the smell

  of men together with drink
• i envied


  each soul in the hot interior
• id wave up 


  to women at sills or those lingering in doorways
• spare


  me sixpence
• i’d dash


  from the ghosts
• i’d ask her again 


  to show me the right way to do it
• my mother would

  spare me sixpence
• don’t be 


  talking to strange men
• where the

  bulb had blown
• a bonus if 


  the moon was in the strip of the sky…..or the stars out
• glisten


  blue like night skies
• light


  in the golden mirrors
• the winkles would


  be wet and glisten blue like night little skies themselves
• she’d be sitting 


  …on an orange crate