CIRCUS

by Imogen Arate

Met Police officer Wayne Couzens has been sentenced to a whole-life term for the murder of Sarah Everard (above), in a case that sparked national outrage and calls for more action to tackle violence against women. Couzens admitted the kidnap, rape, and murder of the 33-year-old marketing executive when he appeared in court several months ago. But it was only during his sentencing that the full details of his crimes emerged. —BBC News, October 1, 2021

Don’t ask me to write a poem about her death

because there’ll be another before I can find

the perfect synonym that excites murders to titillate

Though I think we’ll be just fine with our hot

breath fogging up whichever screen that

protects our voyeurism as a news craze

Don’t look for nuance as there won’t be

hues apart from those that sell well

Misogyny has a target market like any

I mean do we really care about the loss

of peoples whose value we’ve decided 

to debase long ago except during

their assigned celebratory terms

How else can we virtual signal without

Ah sorry #Timesup For your month

I mean Not your demise Amphitheaters

must be filled Come come we’ve broken

through the boundaries of brick-and-mortar 

decades ago but bloodlust is evergreen 

And since we’ve dispensed with shame

only thumbs ups are allowed 

though we’ll deliver all the same 😉

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses (https://poetsandmuses.com), a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published in Rigorous and The Opiate and on the Global Vaccine Poem project. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

FLOWERS FOR SARAH EVERARD

by Jenny Middleton

because we have to buzz—home safe—home safe—

yes—me too—home safe

peppering What’s App with the obvious

because we walk gripping keys

between middle fingers

harrying skin

with shelled expletives

hoping the only use of their jagged

steel edge will be to unlock

the front door

we think—can’t stop

thinking of

your last walk home

caught on keyhole camera

casual, then

over Clapham Common

 

we light candles, Sarah,

watch them blink

in the shadows of ringed shadows

at the base of trees

and lay flowers in a crackle

of cellophane

against the fear

of dark emptied spaces

and words that spit

from a policeman’s mouth

sticking this in you

kidnapping, murdering, mutilating

leaving you in a builder’s sack

only identifiable by your dental records

in Kentish woodland

 

crimes unlovely as the sick

absence of spring leaves

un-grown on laurel trees.

Jenny Middleton is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the chaos of family life. She lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats.