George Ttoouli's Static Exile

Tonight at eight o' clock, George Ttoouli's first collection, Static Exile, has its London launch at The Slaughtered Lamb. Here is a poem from the collection, first published in Pomegranate.

Love on a Monday Evening

Today I felt fear and it was the grandest thing -
like the crown of my head would lift off.
Not a leaf could have flipped on its back in the wind

that I wouldn't have noticed.
An Arab sat opposite me on the train.
I had taken the first carriage,

the one we had imbued with likely death
in a way we can only substantiate for each other.
My fingers filled with static and my blood turned

to white noise. I could describe him for you,
a quick photo-fit sketch, but mostly it was his stubble
and the wart on his left cheek,

like in news reports. I have a spot in the same place
on my right cheek. You've never called me
a terrorist when I've not shaved for that long. Mostly

I have been supporting myself on wire link fences
looking at each partition of waste land,
square by square, until the police move me on.

George Ttoouli

Static Exile can be ordered directly from the publisher, Penned in the Margins.