Advice
You think it ugly: drawing lines with a knife
Down the backs of those writers we exist to dislike. But it’s life.
One is disadvantaged by illustrious company
Left somehow undivided. Divide it with animosity.
Don’t be proud –
Viciousness in poetry isn’t frowned on, it’s allowed.
Big fish in a big sea shrink proportionately.
Stake out your territory
With stone walls, steamrollers, venomous spit
From the throat of a luminous nightflower. Gerrymander it.
.
by Sinead Morrissey
from The State of the Prisons
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester, 2005