poem in red ink

the café is
nearly empty.
there is a coffee
machine called Bravilor

Bonamat (which,
let’s face it,
sounds lik

e the name of
a South Ameri
can dictator,

and is with
out a doubt
the closest this place
gets to any

kind of exoticism –
it even feels
wrong writing

the word café
when describin
g it: the Frenchness,
the accent: false

credentials I’m a
fraid – a whole
Bastille of baguettes

can’t change that,
but anyway, back
to the coffee

machine, its
swanlike noise,
the brown
rotundity of its

bowl like the bole
of an ancient
oak, the last

scone that I
wouldn’t dream of ordering
if it were not
the last scone,

all of these
things calculated
to remind me

of my Englishness,
the Englishness

that people see
as being eaten away
at like the wet

weak sandy cliffs
near the Humber
estuary or something,

the Englishness that

is itself do
ing the eating
away, a map
set alight, all

these small polite
triggers that led
to me choosing

a certain pen out
of my collection
of two) and the

re is me, and a
waitress, and the
news channel

on silent, sh
owing the Olympic
flame, somewhere