By Maeve McKenna
under a rubbish truck Gerard’s hanging from the second-floor balcony syringes stuck to chewing gum on the chalked stones below Gerard’s face reversed in the wing-mirror of a debt-paid Yamaha 125 falling like his mother’s wedding ring into the pawn- shop falling with no feeling of loss as his shin-bone punctures the ulcerated crater of pus the bulging mass on Gerard’s acned fore- head dangling over his gouged nose-lining his sniffling mid-facial erosion Gerard’s head hitting the continuous white line smack but no smack a mob of grey and white gulls with fluorescent orange beaks like couriers arriving with party pizzas circling the scene with winged antenna city radars for guts Gerard’s bottom lip split and two front teeth vanished into the swollen red collision of flesh Gerard, who French-kissed so good with those lips who said come here come on please Gerard who held my hand on that first trip to the gurrier soul who stole words of violence from our alley mouths made them accents of peace for a night Gerard’s finger severed by that gold wedding ring Gerard who worked had a pay check on Fridays Gerard who didn’t smoke cigarettes there a heap on the road in bits under the exhaust finger twitching over at the dried-out manhole Gerard’s father wheeling the rims of a mo- torbike home months later after the hospital, after the debt came back from the wheelie-bin ghost-boys behind the Jervis Shopping Centre Gerard in recovery on a frame Gerard gone again Gerard in cable-ties Gerard revving his body into the ground leg missing finger too Gerard’s gorgeous grey lips and the yellow bulb over his blue smile Gerard nailing happy-dying-face Gerard’s bandaged wrists punctured forearms pinhole tracks Gerard’s tattoos his lovely Granny dead in blurry ink on his arm Gerard’s Ma there too