You don’t deserve skin.
You should be forced to walk around all skull-naked
And ashamed.
You are so stupid
Someone could sneak up behind you,
Steam your flesh loose,
Peel it off your bones,
Make a paper plane from it,
Fly it into your stupid skinless face
And you would still keep plodding on
Like some idiot hippo on the way to buy milk.
I should shove you into a bush,
Leave your legs all akimboing in the foliage,
I should lick between your toes,
In board daylight.
You are a flat rugby ball.
You are a flat rugby ball, being kicked by a lame horse.
You rode a horse to work once,
It hated you so much it died in protest.
It just sat there and died.
PRAISE for Keiran Goddard...
"Keiran Goddard writes with an intensity and commitment matched only by his imagistic facility. The sincerity and lyric ambition of his work place it far from the surface effects and trickery of postmodernism, navigating a terrain darkened by history, literary and otherwise. His is an original new voice that demands our attention."
—Luke Kennard
Keiran Patrick Goddard, 28, was born and raised in Shard End, Birmingham, and educated in Oxford. He has worked as a journalist and editor, and now works in higher education. His poetry has appeared in various journals, most recently, Mercy, the Warwick Review and the Salzburg Review. A pamphlet, Strings, will be published this year by Antler press.
