She Didn't Mean To Do It

Bollocks by the Thames

Bollocks by theThames This is what I saw: Condoms starring the river path, all the blow jobs gone home with dawn. Some boys come walking along this walkway talking of “Seals?!”—“Well, they say it’s the cleanest metropolitan river”—“But, seals??!!” and away beside the slightly jolting green gray river and then just one drunk woman left bulling around in the flower beds, slopping her beer all over the irises, coughing, calling, contempt-filled, triumphant, to the boneskinny man struck silent with her and wine, hollow bottle two-hand clutched, tapping the bench with it, his throat torqued out like a heron’s, sometimes shh-shhshing her, wincing.A cop-type coming out of the back there from the shed, peaked hat, hands not swinging, held out inches from his uniformed hips, him clearly firm about her getting out of there, her shouting “fucker” and “wanker” and “bollocks” and still him firmly waiting and her head shaking doggishly as if to shudder off her face-flesh. Beer on the flowers, down her shirt, slapping up out of the can-hole, cop-guy pushing her from the garden though never laying on his hands.They’re like two repelling magnets, her backing from his push, shocked, stunned, electrically separate, her halting her bigness over his small  self, her screaming. “Yeh only ‘ave one loife. Enjoy it!” Her wino boyfriend skinking off after her between some trees. “Bollocks!” Her call coming back into the garden.And the cop-type coming over, sheepish, laughing that his mother said “bollocks” all the time: “‘all bolloxed up’ she said,” he said, “and no idea it meant testicles,” rolling that last off his tongue like a chitter of curly birds, blushing: “Shite, sorry, I don’t even know you.” That’s what he said to me.  ...