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Repair Bill by Alan Kissane



Repair Bill


I’m dreaming of summer

when the boiler breaks.

Water escapes

its rusting prison and clings

to the ceiling, crying a face like Jesus

in drag onto the wallpaper.

We think about reporting

it to the local newspaper

or church newsletter

but decide at last

to let him dance alone.

He can be the conversation starter

at tomorrow’s therapy session

where secrets

will be uncovered softly

like blisters on a tongue.

We loved each other once

in the backseat of a car,

in a bed, in the sky,

but even those memories

flood out of us now

onto freshly scorched lands

where bushes slowly burn.



Alan Kissane works as a teacher of English in the Midlands, UK. His poetry has appeared in print and online at Allegro, Culture Matters, Dreich, Dust Poetry, Emerge Literary Journal, Epoch, Fahmidan, iamb, Ink Sac, Kindling, Mono, and Neologism amongst others. He is currently editing his first collection entitled ‘Searching For The Fire In The Long Grass.’


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