Herms by R. M. Francis

This third incarnation

of thirteen stiffs semi-circle

Sheldonian’s stern -

still, indifferent, stoned

and sometimes crowned

with traffic cone, wren shit

hufflepuff scarf. One or two

have humour for it. All stare,

unblinking at map gripped tourist tracks,

inert undergrads - ghouled

by samsung screens,

blinkered cyclists and white vans vying

like Tamesis Pike and Carp wrestle

Osney Lock currents. Thirteen Herns

are angler fixed - baits weighted for

another incarnation,

another three-hundred years

when our postcard pics have weathered

and our server farms are lost, after palm oil

took precedence over air, the babewyn continue

to unhook themselves from gutters and spires

and run jokes past the emperors, about parallel lines

crashing together in infinity.

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R. M. Francis is a poet from Dudley. He's a Creative Writing lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton and author of five poetry pamphlet collections. In 2020 Wild Pressed Books will be publish Bella, his debut novel, and Smokestack Books are publishing Subsidence, his first full poetry collection. In Spring 2019 he was the David Bradshaw Writer in Residence at Oxford University.