Vik Shirley
FOLLOWING THE PIGEON
You walk to a fork in the road
and in the distance see an albino pigeon
beckoning you on the left side
and a red ox luring you to the right.
The albino pigeon has a certain je ne sais quoi,
so you start walking in that direction,
but your legs have turned to ribbons.
Luckily they are long ribbons,
so you tie them together and lasso yourself
to the tow-bar of a passing truck,
but as you get closer, the pigeon
is somehow distant again.
You notice other pigeons behind bushes
watching, sniggering and smirking,
and realise that this is some kind of joke.
You can hear the red ox moaning
on the breeze, as if to say I told you so,
which is the last thing you need to hear.
So you pull out your mirror from your back pocket
and say: “Candyman, Candyman, Candyman.”
A demon appears behind you and impales you
with a hook, which is far less frustrating.
THE SHELF
A girl became obsessed with a shelf.
Her mother thought it was "getting ridiculous" and asked the girl's father to "do something!"
"Talk to her", she said. "Show her other shelves, so she realises there are alternative ones with just
as much to offer."
Her husband was a skirting board so did not reply, let alone take action.
Taking matters into her own hands, the mother started illuminating other shelves around the house,
to make them tantalising, accessorising them, hanging decorations from their corners and so forth.
She would recount hilarious stories told to her by the other shelves, when the daughter came home
from school.
The girl started to suspect that her mother was in love with the shelf and that they were having an
affair.
Without wanting to involve or upset her father, but consumed with jealousy, the girl smashed up the
shelf and set it alight in the back garden when her mother was out.
When her mother returned and could see what was done, she became hysterical and started rooting
around in the flames for pieces of the shelf.
It was during this process that her mother caught alight and burned to death.
After the event, the daughter meticulously separated their ashes. She made it her life's work.
You walk to a fork in the road
and in the distance see an albino pigeon
beckoning you on the left side
and a red ox luring you to the right.
The albino pigeon has a certain je ne sais quoi,
so you start walking in that direction,
but your legs have turned to ribbons.
Luckily they are long ribbons,
so you tie them together and lasso yourself
to the tow-bar of a passing truck,
but as you get closer, the pigeon
is somehow distant again.
You notice other pigeons behind bushes
watching, sniggering and smirking,
and realise that this is some kind of joke.
You can hear the red ox moaning
on the breeze, as if to say I told you so,
which is the last thing you need to hear.
So you pull out your mirror from your back pocket
and say: “Candyman, Candyman, Candyman.”
A demon appears behind you and impales you
with a hook, which is far less frustrating.
THE SHELF
A girl became obsessed with a shelf.
Her mother thought it was "getting ridiculous" and asked the girl's father to "do something!"
"Talk to her", she said. "Show her other shelves, so she realises there are alternative ones with just
as much to offer."
Her husband was a skirting board so did not reply, let alone take action.
Taking matters into her own hands, the mother started illuminating other shelves around the house,
to make them tantalising, accessorising them, hanging decorations from their corners and so forth.
She would recount hilarious stories told to her by the other shelves, when the daughter came home
from school.
The girl started to suspect that her mother was in love with the shelf and that they were having an
affair.
Without wanting to involve or upset her father, but consumed with jealousy, the girl smashed up the
shelf and set it alight in the back garden when her mother was out.
When her mother returned and could see what was done, she became hysterical and started rooting
around in the flames for pieces of the shelf.
It was during this process that her mother caught alight and burned to death.
After the event, the daughter meticulously separated their ashes. She made it her life's work.
© Copyright Vik Shirley 2021
Vik Shirley has published Corpses (Sublunary Editions), The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN Press) and Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock Press). Her work has appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Perverse, Tears in the Fence, Shearsman and 3am Magazine. She is currently studying for a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal at the University of Birmingham.