Even the sky by Paul Stephenson

Even the sky

after Duran Parsi

has started voting for populist parties.

It rains that much harder on immigrants,

their accommodation flooding meaning 

they’re victims of freak summer weather.

Insurance firms won’t pay up. They insist

on the finer points in pages of small print,

talk of acts of God and force majeure to those

who don’t speak English. Safe in the dry

you can’t help but wonder how stateless

kids can concentrate enough to keep up

with coursework on the causes of coastal

erosion, wearing away in two-man tents,

their canvas satchels and textbooks soaked

while posh folk turn their back on campsites,

buy luxury caravans in some cheap protest. 

And I think to myself it must be hell to bang 

plastic pegs with a steel stake hammer

into the blue linoleum floors of temporary 

shelters like sports halls and gymnasia

and commandeered community centres.

Seeing a sequel of dark clouds roll in

I go back to the TV and switch over,

and glued to the low-pressure system – cut

to live reports of extreme precipitation.

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023. It was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and for the Polari Book Prize 2024. He has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017).